Nb₂O₅: Percentage Effect of T/H Phase and Evaluation of Catalytic Activity, a Preliminary Study

Due to its similar characteristics to titanium, niobium has become an attractive alternative in photocatalytic processes. Research indicates that titania has an optimal percentage of phases resulting in a commercial catalyst, P25, that contains more than 70% anatase with a minor amount of rutile and a small amount of amorphous phase. On the other hand, for Nb₂O₅, percentage optimization was little explored in the literature, which consists of studying the phases obtained via heat treatment individually and in different percentages via chemometric studies. In this context, the present research proposes to study the T/H phases of Nb₂O₅ and their mixture. The catalysts were used to assess the catalytic activity in salicylic acid (SA) degradation. The results demonstrated that a theoretical mixture of T/H phase, with an optimal ratio of 69.1% of the H phase, had more significant SA degradation than the tests with the pure phases. The mixture was able to degrade 87.9% of SA in 60 minutes.