Biomaterial Supported Binary Semiconductor Metal Oxide Nanocomposite for Water Remediation under Solar Irradiation

Abstract An eco friendly biopolymer supported binary metal oxide nanocomposite was prepared by a co precipitation method and characterized by FT-IR, XRD, TGA, UV-DRS, SEM, EDAX and BET analysis. The band gap energy was found to be 2.06 eV. The prepared catalyst was employed for the photocatalytic dye degradation of model pollutant AB113 dye under solar irradiation. The catalytic efficiency of the photocatalyst was confirmed by preliminary studies, kinetics and COD. The reaction rate constant was calculated and the reaction follows first order kinetics. The prepared photocatalyst actively degraded the Acid Blue 113 (97%) dye under solar irradiation within 300 minutes. Therefore it will be a potential catalyst for dye degradation of the effluents discharged from the dyeing industries.