Synthesis surface functionalization and characterization of magnetite nanoparticles for its application in cationic dyes removal

Abstract

Environmental pollution is the major threat worldwide in the present scenario. Water pollution is considered as serious concern in recent years. Water is the major utility used for industrial process and the industrial effluents mainly share the significant contribution to the environmental pollution. The toxic pollutants generated from the industrial processes affects living systems in the earth. Textile, paint, printing industries employed synthetic dyes and discharge enormous amount of dye containing wastewater to the water resources without proper treatment. Synthetic dyes are highly toxic even in low concentration and difficult to degrade because of their structure complexity. Hence, the removal of toxic dyes from waste water is primary need in present days to improve the water quality and to conserve. Various treatment strategies such as adsorption, coagulation, electrochemical oxidation, biological, and membrane filtration were successfully used for dye removal from industrial effluents. However, adsorption is highly preferred method because it is effective for wide variety of dye pollutants, simple and cost-effective. Nanotechnology is the field of studying the materials at size range of 1-100 nm and it provides the sustainable solutions to current global issues. It extends its applications to electronics, catalysis, biomedical, energy and environmental fields. Currently, nanoparticles are employed as effective adsorbents for various dye removal studies. The present research focused on the synthesis and surface functionalization and characterization of magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) for its application as nanoadsorbent to remove the cationic dyes, Crystal violet (CV) and Auramine-O (AO) from the aqueous solution. MNPs were synthesized via co-precipitation method and sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) was used as surface functionalization agent. The size and shape of the synthesized MNPs were characterized by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) and High Resolution Transmission ElectronMicrosco