Synthesis and characterisation of highly ordered mesoporous Fe2O3-SiO2 composite and its removal properties of azo dyes from aqueous solution

Highly ordered mesoporous material MCM-41 was synthesised from tetraethylorthosilicate as an Si source and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide as a template. Fe2O3 with 100 wt-% was introduced into the highly ordered mesoporous MCM-41 by chemical precipitation method to prepare the highly ordered mesoporous Fe2O3-SiO2 composite. The samples were characterised by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-vis spectrophotometry, and nitrogen adsorption-desorption measurement respectively. The results indicate that the synthesised Fe2O3-SiO2 composite has a highly ordered mesoporous structure with a specific surface area of 593 m(2) g(-1) and a pore volume of 0.322 cm(3) g(-1). The performance of Fe2O3-SiO2 composite as a remover was further demonstrated in the removal of methyl orange (MO), Congo red, methylene blue (MB), rhodaming B (RB) under visible light irradiation respectively. A good ability to remove MB, RB and MO can be obtained. In especially, the Fe2O3-SiO2 composite shows an excellent removal performance for MB under the room temperature in short time, making them to be promising candidates for wastewater treatment.