Toxic Congo Red Dye Photodegradation Employing Green Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Using Gum Arabic

Abstract

A green synthesis method for producing zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) was presented using natural Gum Arabic (GA) as a natural stabilizing agent. For the first time, the as-synthesized ZnO NPs were employed to photodegrade the toxic Congo Red (CR) dye in an aqueous solution. The structural and morphological characterizations confirmed the successful synthesis of ZnO NPs. The ZnO NPs possessed an average crystallite size of 42.7 nm. In addition, it was found that a concentration of 20 mg L−1 of CR dye yielded the most favorable photodegradation results, and 4 mg mL−1 of the photocatalyst was the optimal amount. The results showed a maximum degradation percentage of 99.5% at pH 8 after 30 min of irradiation. This indicates that the as-synthesized ZnO NPs have remarkable photocatalytic properties. Moreover, the study demonstrated the suitability of the pseudo-first-order kinetic model for representing the photodegradation process through kinetic studies of the photocatalyst process of CR dye by ZnO NPs using the Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) model.

Keywords

• zinc oxide
• gum Arabic
• green synthesis
• Congo red dyes
• photodegradation
• Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) kinetic model