MS/MPhil

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Browsing MS/MPhil by Author "Bakhtawar Sarfraz"

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    Investigation of photocatalytic degradation of methyl green dye by utilizing zinc oxide and carbon nanotubes nanocomposite
    (UMT, Lahore, 2022) Bakhtawar Sarfraz
    The present work describes a facile route for degradation and de-colorization of methyl green (MG) dye by pure and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) doped Zinc oxide (ZnO) photocatalysts under visible light. The MWCNTs have been commercially purchased and ZnO photocatalyst has been synthesized by the chemical precipitation route. The XRD diffractogram of ZnO generally indicates its polycrystalline nature with the prominent peak intensity appearing in the (101) direction, whereas the average crystallite size is estimated as 16.503 nm by using the Scherrer’s formula. Similarly, the XRD pattern for MWCNTs exhibits a sharp peak centered at 2θ equal to 26.1° indicating the inter-planar spacing (d(002)) between walls of carbon nanotubes ~ 3.41 Å, The surface morphological analysis has also been conducted by using FESEM, which specifies nanoparticles based surface texture, whereas the MWCNTs have been observed to exhibit relatively seamless (free from beads) and smooth side walls with randomly and densely entangled tubular structures. During the photocatalytic characterization, after 90 minutes illumination of visible light, ~94.97% and ~ 95.31% degradation of MG aqueous solution has been realized for pure and MWCNTs-doped ZnO photocatalyst, respectively. Specifically, the rate of photocatalytic kinetics (K) ~ 0.03761 min-1 (with R2 ~ 0.95686) has been realized for pure, whereas slightly higher k ~ 0.03869 min-1 (with R2 ~ 0.91965) has been achieved for the MWCNTs-doped ZnO nanoparticles, respectively. The improved photodegradation ability of MWCNTs-doped ZnO may be attributed to the superior charge separation efficiency of doped MWCNTs ZnO photocatalyst.