article · Frontiers in Materials
Water contamination from industrial dyes presents an environmental challenge, driving interest in low-cost semiconductor photocatalysts. A chemical precipitation method using hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide as a capping agent was used to synthesise nickel oxide, nickel oxide and zinc oxide composites, and nickel oxide and copper oxide nanoparticles. Structural and optical evaluations revealed band gaps of 3.00 electronvolts for pure nickel oxide, 2.90 electronvolts for the zinc oxide composite, and 3.25 electronvolts for the copper oxide composite. When tested on methylene blue dye under ultraviolet light, optimum conditions occurred at pH 8 with 75 milligrams of catalyst and 175 minutes of irradiation. Under these settings, pure nickel oxide degraded 89.8 percent of the dye, the copper oxide composite degraded 94.2 percent, and the zinc oxide composite achieved 97 percent degradation. The superior performance of the zinc oxide composite is attributed to charge transfer processes inhibiting electron-hole recombination.
Discharging synthetic dyes into water bodies threatens aquatic ecosystems and human health. Finding low-cost, efficient methods to break down these pollutants is vital for sustainable industrial operations. Demonstrating that simple nanocomposite formulations can remove up to 97 percent of dye contaminants under ultraviolet light offers a practical pathway towards cleaner industrial effluent treatment.
This research demonstrates an applied, laboratory-tested catalyst for industrial wastewater treatment, particularly targeting operations discharging organic dye pollutants. Industrial effluent treatment operators could potentially deploy such composite catalysts for water purification. However, the technology is currently early-stage laboratory research tested on synthetic dye solutions under controlled ultraviolet lighting, requiring scaling, durability testing, and integration into continuous flow treatment facilities before commercial use.
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The photocatalytic process over semiconducting oxide surfaces has attracted worldwide attention as a potentially efficient, environmentally friendly, and low-cost method for wastewater treatment. This study presents a straightforward, inexpensive, and rapid route for the synthesis of nickel oxide (NiO) and its composites with zinc oxide (NiO/ZnO) and copper oxide (NiO/CuO) nanoparticles through the chemical precipitation method using capping agent-hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) for photocatalytic degradation of the methylene blue dye. The structure, morphology, and elemental constituents were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The energy band gap of pure NiO, NiO-ZnO, and NiO-CuO composites was evaluated using the Tauc plot from absorption spectra and resulted as 3.00, 2.90, and 3.25 eV, respectively. The optimum parameters for all photocatalysts were the following: pH 8, irradiation time 175 min, catalyst amount 75 mg, and dye concentration 7 mg/L. At these optimum parameters, the degradation efficiency of the prepared photocatalysts toward the MB dye achieved was 89.8% for NiO, 97% for NiO/ZnO, and 94.2% for NiO/CuO. The highest activity of the p-type/n-type (NiO/ZnO) nanocomposite for MB degradation is possibly due to electron–hole pair recombination inhibition by charge transfer processes. Therefore, semiconducting composite-based nanocatalysts such as NiO/ZnO with high photocatalytic activity are promising for future industrial applications to remove undesirable organic pollutants from the environment.
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DOI: 10.3389/fmats.2022.832439
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