Degradation of methylene blue using silver nanoparticles synthesized from imperata cylindrica aqueous extract

The present study reports about the catalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) by sodium borohydride (NaBH4) in presence of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) as catalyst. Ag NPs was produced from green synthesis method using aqueous Imperata cylindrica extract. Formation of Ag NPs from the synthesis was confirmed by using UV-visible spectroscopy with the appearance of surface plasmon (SPR) bands around 427 nm. The agglomeration in microstructure of biosynthesized Ag NPs was revealed by field scanning electron microscope (FESEM).The synthesized of Ag NPs showed five diffraction peaks at 2θ values of 38.62°, 44.51°, 64.84°, 77.68° and 81.96° which corresponds to the (111), (200), (220), (311) and (222) planes of face-centred cubic. Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) revealed signals at the energy of 3 keV which indicates the presence of elemental silver that contributed to 68.44 weight % of the analysed sample. Upon addition of biosynthesized silver nanoparticles, the degradation of MB increases up to 92.06% within 14 min.