One-pot hydrothermal treatment using ethylene glycol (EG) at 180 °C for 12 h has been confirmed to effectively generate titanium dioxide urchin-like nanoparticles. X-Ray diffractometry (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) were applied to characterize the structure and morphology of the as-prepared titanium dioxide after calcination at different temperatures for 2 h. According to XRD analysis, the synthesized calcined titanium dioxide has average crystallite sizes between 13.4 and 17.7 nm. The photocatalytic behavior of the prepared titanium dioxide nanoparticles was examined utilizing methylene blue dye. The process of photodegradation is performed under different experimental parameters such as the influence of contact time, initial dye concentration, photocatalyst dose and temperature. The MB photodegradation kinetics was found to follow the pseudo-first-order model with R2 > 0.99. Thermodynamic parameters for the photodegradation system showed that the photodegradation process is spontaneous, endothermic and favorable at high temperatures.