SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ZINC AND FERRITE BASED PHOTOCATALYST FOR DYE DEGRADATION IN WATER

Abstract

Due to increase in water pollution around the globe due to industrial wastewater, there is an increased focus on photocatalytic degradation for treatment of industrial wastewater. For this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) and zinc ferrite Zn(Fe2O4) have been synthesized via co-precipitation route and used as photocatalyst for degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation. The ZnO-ZnFe2O4 composite is successfully fabricated as photocatalyst and its photocatalytic activity for methylene blue (MB) degradation is successfully analyzed while comparing its efficiency with the induvial material. The characterization of three photocatalyst has been carried out utilizing XRD, FTIR, RAMAN, SEM-EDX, BET and VSM. These techniques confirm the structural, morphological, chemical and magnetic properties of synthesized photocatalysts. The photocatalytic degradation was carried out for all materials while keeping pH, temperature, initial dye concentration and catalyst dosage same. The results showed that ZnO showed highest degradation rate of 98.45% followed by ZnFe2O4 and ZnO-ZnFe2O4 composite under irradiation time of 120 minutes. The kinetics results showed that the photocatalytic degradation reaction adheres to pseudo first order reaction. Posts photocatalytic XRD analysis showed the stability of synthesized photocatalyst after degradation process. Mineralization analysis showed that ZnO-ZnFe2O4 composite showed the highest mineralization of organic contaminants. The study indicates that ZnO-ZnFe2O4 composite can be used as cost effective photocatalyst with improved recyclability due to its magnetic properties, for degradation of hazardous organic dyes from aqueous solutions.