Preparation and application of separable magnetic Fe3O4-SiO2-APTES-Ag2O composite particles with high visible light photocatalytic performance.

Silver oxide is a potential visible-light driven photocatalyst for the degradation of organic pollutants, but its high cost and energy intensive recovery limit its future applications. In this study, a magnetic core-shell composite, Fe 3 O 4 -SiO 2 -APTES-Ag 2 O, was prepared and evaluated. Results show that the obtained composite possesses equivalent photocatalytic performance to the pure Ag 2 O under visible light irradiation. Phenol and methyl orange can be effectively photodegraded with the composite catalyst in 10 min. The used composite can be efficiently separated with greater than a 98.95% recovery rate in 5 s with a 330 mT magnetic field after four cycles. In addition, the composite only exhibited negligible performance decay due to the slight loss of loaded Ag 2 O. Evaluations of the Fe 3 O 4 -SiO 2 -APTES-Ag 2 O composite performance in a batch reactor, a semi-continuous reactor, and a continuous magnetic agglomeration reactor with methyl orange, all confirm the superb performance, stability, and separability of this magnetic composite photocatalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]