Design and development of hybrid nanocomposite photocatalysts for dye degradation and metal ion reduction under solar light irradiation

Abstract

Industrialization and globalization have led to significant environmental pollution, particularly in aquatic environments. Water pollution is primarily caused by wastewater discharge from process industries, dyeing, textile, pharmaceutical, and agricultural sectors. The search for cost-effective and suitable technologies for treating wastewater is very important. The advancement of heterogeneous semiconductor photocatalysis in Advanced Oxidation Process (AOP) is rapidly progressing by employing semiconductor photocatalysis and gaining recognition as a green technology. Hence, the current research work is focused on developing novel semiconductor photocatalysts including pristine (Bi2O3, Bi2MoO6, Sm2O3, ZnO and g-C3N4), binary (Bi2O3/MWCNTs, Bi2MoO6/Sm2O3, Bi2MoO6/g C3N4) and ternary ((Bi2MoO6/Sm2O3)-g-C3N4) hybrid nanocomposites through simple and cost effective preparation methods. The prepared photocatalytic materials were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, UV-Vis-DRS, FE-SEM, HR-TEM, Raman spectroscopy, AFM, XPS, EPR and BET analyses. The prepared pristine, binary and ternary nanocomposite materials were evaluated for the photocatalytic degradation of Amido black (AB 10B) dye and reduction of Chromium (VI) from aqueous phase under solar light irradiation. newline