Synthesis, Characterization, and Use of Novel Bimetal Oxide Catalyst for Photoassisted Degradation of Malachite Green Dye

Abstract

This work reports a simple, novel, and cost effective synthesis of nanobimetal oxide catalyst using cerium and cadmium nitrates as metal precursors. The cerium-cadmium oxide nanophotocatalyst was synthesized by coprecipitation method and characterized by X-ray powder diffraction method to analyze the particle size. XRD study reveals a high degree of crystallinity and 28.43 nm particle size. The photocatalytic efficiency of the synthesized nanobimetal catalyst was examined by using it for the photocatalytic degradation of malachite green dye. Experiments were conducted to study the effect of various parameters, such as the pH of the dye solution, concentration of dye, amount of catalyst, and light intensity on the rate of dye degradation. The progress of the dye degradation was monitored spectrophotometrically by taking the optical density of the dye solution at regular intervals. Experimental results indicate that the dye degrades best at pH 8.0 with light intensity 600 Wm−2 and catalyst loading 0.03 g/50 mL of dye solution. The rate constant for the reaction was 7.67 × 10−4 s−1.