Adsorption and photocatalytic characteristics of cobalt ferrite-reduced graphene oxide and cobalt ferrite-carbon nanotube nanocomposites
Graphical Abstract
Introduction
Wastewaters coming out of textile and painting industries contain several pollutants especially dyes like MB, phenol, methyl orange, and so forth [1,2]. These pollutants are serious health hazards and may affect the life of aquatic creatures as well as human beings [3]. So, the removal of these pollutants has been one of the researchers’ significant concerns. The feasibility of applying biochar into co-composting with contaminated soil was confirmed by not only the high remediation efficiency but also the sustainable recycling of agricultural waste [4]. Traditional methods of dye removal including physical, chemical and biological methods just convert pollutants to other forms; necessitating another treatment [5]. Hence, it is more economical to implement a method that does not demand a subsequent process. Among modern processes, photocatalytic oxidation has attracted significant attention in recent years since it converts mentioned contaminants to harmless products like CO2 [6]. Many researchers [[7], [8], [9], [10]] have investigated photocatalytic degradation of dyes especially because of the mineralization of the pollutants. Ye et al. [11] have prepared a biochar-based composites with quite high efficiency for tetracycline hydrochloride removal based on the synergistic action of the desirable absorption and photocatalytic capability. Also, metal-free biochar from Boehmeria nivea fiber was an efficient carbocatalyst for tetracycline hydrochloride degradation [12]. The use of magnetic materials in pollutants removal processes makes them possible to significantly simplify the complicated procedure for separating powdered adsorbents from solution using an external magnetic field. The studies on the use of ferrite nanoparticles to purify water and wastewater from organic and inorganic contaminants have proven their benefits. They are very stable and can be regenerated and reused over several cycles without losing their properties. Also, magnetic nanocomposites have attracted increasing attention due to their low cost, mechanical and chemical resistance [[13], [14], [15]]. Designing a photocatalyst with a high efficiency is of great importance and CF (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles with high chemical stability, special magnetic properties and small band gap energy emerged as a promising candidate for the photocatalytic reaction [16,17]. One of the major challenges of photocatalysts is the separation and recovery of photocatalyst nanoparticles from the treated water [18], but an impressive advantage of magnetic photocatalysts is their easy magnetic separation from the solution [19]. CF exhibits low efficiency in visible light for dye degradation due to the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes. To enhance the photocatalytic performance of CF, it could be composited with high electron conductors such as graphene or CNT. Graphene has received gear attention due to its distinct properties such as its outstanding charge-carrier mobility, high thermal conductivity, high mechanical stiffness and high specific surface area for the preparation of photocatalyst composites [20,21]. Therefore, graphene can be used in producing of photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activity. Another latent carbon material, CNT is a type of one-dimensional nanomaterial with high surface area and excellent conductivity and similarly chemical stability [22]. In the process of photocatalysis, CNT or graphene can act as an excellent electron-acceptor/transport donor which hinders the fast recombination of electrons and holes [23]. In another research, it was reported that the absorption performance of CF-graphene composite is better than pure CF [24]. On the other hand, CNT is convenient support for semiconductors with potential application in photocatalysis owing to its high mechanical strength, chemical stability, special electrical properties and mesoporous characteristic which favors the diffusion of reacting species [25]. Hence, embedding CNT as an electron transfer channel in metal oxides is another reason to induce the synergetic effect of producing efficient photocatalysts [26,27]. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, the modification of CF photocatalyst with CNT and the performance of the CF-CNT composite is still rarely reported. Despite the high potential of CNT and graphene in photodegradation reaction due to their high specific surface area, they suffer from an easy separation from the solution after the process, and one way to remove this difficulty is by the corporation of some magnetic photocatalyst. Thereby, in this research, CF-rGO and CF-CNT nanocomposite photocatalysts have been synthesized by a facile co-precipitation method. Then, the adsorption characteristics and photocatalytic activity of CF, CF-rGO and CF-CNT photocatalysts were investigated. With the development of carbon materials, many scientists have developed carbon materials based for low cost and highly active photocatalysts. Many research works have been carried out on this subject, but a systematic study about the key roles of different carbon materials as cocatalysts is still lacking. Since the photocatalytic behavior and kinetics of rGO and CNT containing nanocomposites have not been compared to each other, the degradation efficiencies and kinetics of these reactions were evaluated and compared in detail.
Section snippets
Experimental procedure
The starting materials in this study were multi-walled CNTs with a diameter of 20-30 nm and purity of >99%, GO with a thickness of 0.5-1 nm, the lateral size of 0.5-2 μm and purity of >99%, CoCl2.6H2O 98%, FeCl3.6H2O 99%, and NaOH (2 M) 99%. CF powder (denoted as CF sample) were prepared using the co-precipitation method. Briefly, 2.84 g of CoCl2.6H2O was dissolved in 80 mL of distilled water under stirring. After 30 min, 5.46 g of FeCl3.6 H2O was added to the above solution to form a uniform
Characterization results
XRD patterns of all samples are shown in Fig. 1. The sharp and intense peaks indicated the formation of the highly crystalline character of the CF sample. Also, after the combination of CF with both rGO and CNT, the crystalline structure remains stable. The dominant diffraction peaks in all samples can be indexed to spinel CoFe2O4 structure with JCPDS Card No. 22-1086. The impurity phases were not detected in the samples. In CF-CNT and CF-rGO samples, a weak peak at 2θ of 26° confirmed the
Conclusions
In this study, CF, CF-rGO and CF-CNT nanocomposite samples were successfully synthesized by using the co-precipitation process. Different properties of structural, microstructural, magnetic, optical and photocatalytic activity of samples were investigated. FESEM results showed that CF particles are distributed on rGO sheets and CNTs. However, CNT containing photocatalyst showed smaller crystallite and particle sizes. DRS results showed that, by the addition of rGO and CNT to CF, the band gap
CRediT authorship contribution statement
F. Jelokhani: Data curation, Validation, Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. S. Sheibani: Visualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. A. Ataie: Visualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the University of Tehran and the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council for this research.
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