RESUMO

Heterogeneous photocatalysis with natural minerals (geocatalysis) has been considered for a wide variety of redox processes, which require the participation of metals either as catalysts or promoters in the reactive system. Black mineral sand as raw material (RM), which is a natural composite frequently found in coastal deposits, was used for the preparation of a semiconductor potential. Due to iron content of mineral, it was applied several magnetic fields (0.0311 and 0.1645 Tesla) to obtain the fractions M1 and M2, respectively. The fraction that was not magnetically attracted was named NM. The chemical, structural and optical properties of each obtained composite were characterized by Zeta potential (ζ), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), energy-dispersive X-Ray analysis (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), BET area, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and UV-Vis spectroscopy techniques.