Long Term and Cost Effective Remediation Technology Based on Sonocatalysis Using Affordable Semiconducting Metal Ferrite Loaded Nanocatalysts

Abstract

Currently, the Textile industry wastewater treatment is one of the main concerns due to its impacts on aquatic life and the environment. Even though many textile wastewater treatment processes have been applied nowadays, hybrid treatment processes are practiced, and they also have some limitations such as high energy requirement, long processing time, high cost, difficulty in recovery and reusability. Therefore, present research work focused on the cost-effective remediation technology based on sonocatalysis and catalysis under the ambient condition in the presence of affordable metal ferrite loaded semiconductor nanocatalysts which have been utilized to overcome the limitations in wastewater treatment and to enhance the dye degradation efficiency. The present study deals with the preparation, characterization and evaluation of catalytic and sonocatalytic efficiency of metal ferrites loaded semiconductor nanocatalysts on acid blue 113 degradation. CoFe2O4/ZnO and CoFe2O4/TiO2 magnetic nanoferrites were synthesized using a low-frequency ultrasound to enhance the optical, morphological, magnetic and catalytic properties of semiconductor nanocatalysts. The synthesized nanocatalysts were characterized by X-Ray diffraction, Raman, transmission electron microscope, diffuse reflectance-UV-Vis spectroscopy and vibrating sample magnetometer analysis in order to confirm the expected modifications of the resulting nanocatalysts. The synthesized material was tested for its catalytic activity in the degradation of Acid Blue (AB113), a known textile pollutant. CoFe2O4 nanoparticles with a bandgap of 1.5 eV have excellent magnetic properties but poor catalytic degradation of Acid Blue (AB113) under ambient conditions due to the rapid recombination of electronic charges. To prevent the rapid recombination of electronic charges and to preserve magnetic properties exhibited by CoFe2O4 nanoparticles, in this study, a non-magnetic counterpart (TiO2 and ZnO) was engineered by the low-frequency ultrasound (40 kHz) assisted process.