3. Results and discussion
3.1. Material characterization of TCF bio-catalyst
Molecular structures of chitosan and xylan are shown in Fig. 1.
Both chemicals are biomaterials that are widely available in nature.
Chitosan (Fig.1a) has an amino group in its structure. Xylan (Fig.1b)
contains predominantly b-D-xylose units. Both chemicals presented
their unique characteristics in CF and TCF as detected by XRD
pattern in Fig. 2. NanoTiO2 crystalline (Fig. 2a) was mainly
composed of anatase phase (as shown by the main peak of 2q at
25.3) and rutile phase (2q at 27.5). Normally, chitin-chitosan was
outstanding demonstrated peak of 2q in two positions at 9 and 21
(Sankararamakrishnan et al., 2005). However, the broad peak at
approximately 21 also indicates some short-range order in the
amorphous polymeric structure of the hemicellulose in xylan (Cara
et al., 2013).In our work, two peaks at 9 and 21 in XRD spectra spectrum of the TCF, 0.4% w/w TiO2 with 1.5% w/w of chitosan and
0.1% w/w xylan is shown in Fig. 3e. The Ti peaks are pronounced in
the TCF material. From overall characterization of the TCF, the existence
of TiO2 crystalline impregnated on the chitosan/xylan is
clearly illustrated.