Studies on photocatalytic degradation of dyes using semiconductor metal oxide nanoparticles

Abstract

The recent rapid growth of industries has led to environmental newlineproblems and high levels of pollution worldwide. Conserving natural newlineresources, especially preserving water is one of the critical problems faced by newlinehumanity today. The biggest environmental challenge for the twenty-first newlinecentury is to provide and maintain clean water for the ecosystem. Industrial newlineeffluents have posed a threat to water bodies due to the parameters of newlinechemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand, toxicity, unpleasant newlineodor and colour. This dye effluent demolishes the ground and surface water newlinemaking it unsuitable for drinking and irrigation. Some chemicals in the dye newlineeffluent are volatile, carcinogenic and mutagenic for living species. The newlineprimary step of industrial wastewater treatment is to decrease or eliminate newlinecolouring additives and dissolved organic compounds in order to meet newlineenvironmental requirements. The main objective of this work is to mineralize newlinethe organic compounds using non-toxic photocatalysts. Therefore, an efficient newlinemethod of removing dyes before discharging them into the environment was newlinerequired. newlineSeveral methods have been employed for the treatment of wastewater. newlineNevertheless, those methods only enable impurities to be condensed or newlinetransformed to another level, while their complete dye removal or newlineneutralization is not achieved, as well it is characterized by high operating newlinecosts. Hence, it is important to establish inexpensive and environmentfriendly newlineprocesses for the complete degradation of pollutants. In recent newlinedecades, the photocatalytic process using semiconducting materials has newlineshown huge benefits as a low-cost, eco-friendly and sustainable treatment newlinetechnology to align with the low-waste regime in the field of the wastewater newlineindustry. Because it mineralizes organic dyes into H2O and CO2 without newlinesecondary contamination because of its high oxidation potential. newline