Photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange using doped ZnO nanocatalyst

Abstract

University Institute of Chemical Technology, Kavayitri Bahinabai Chaudhari North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon­ 425 001, Maharashtra, India E-mail: [email protected] Manuscript received online 20 December 2019, revised and accepted 04 January 2020 Photocatalysis has been emerged as a potential solution for the degradation of organic compounds present in wastewater. Zinc oxide (ZnO) possess broad band gap (3.2 eV) absorbing more light quanta to be effective for degradation of organic pollutants. In present work, pure ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized by precipitation method involving dropwise addition and instant addition of zinc acetate dihydrate solution in sodium bicarbonate at different temperature. Alkaline earth metal mag­nesium (Mg) and transition metal manganese (Mn) were doped with pure ZnO nanoparticles to enhance the photocatalytic degradation rate. The characterization of synthesized nanocatalyst was carried out using XRD, FE-SEM and FTIR. The deg­radation performance of methyl orange (MO) in the presence of pure ZnO, Mg-ZnO and Mn-ZnO nanocatalyst were carried out in batch reactor by UV irradiation. Degradation efficiency of 90.2% and 85.8% were observed for Mg-ZnO and Mn-ZnO nanocatalyst at neutral pH, 150 mg of catalyst loading and 1000 ppm MO concentration, respectively.