Eco-friendly synthesis of reduced graphene oxide as sustainable photocatalyst for removal of hazardous organic dyes
Punniyakotti Parthipan, Monerah A. Al-Dosary, Abdullah Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, Subramania Angaiah
Abstract
Synthetic dyes are widely used as coloring agents in the textile, food, paper, leather, and printing industries. Sustainable removal of these dye molecules is a challenging task due to their toxic nature to the environment as well as for living organisms. In the present study, a simple hydrothermal method is carried out to synthesize reduced graphene oxide (rGO) using the leaves extract of Murraya koenigii. Further, different characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, UV–vis spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) are used to confirm the physicochemical properties of synthesized rGO. Raman analysis confirms the reduction of graphene oxide by the increase in ID/IG ratio significantly. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis show well-exploited rGO morphology. Further, newly synthesized rGO is used as a photocatalyst for the removal of methylene blue (MB) and methyl orange (MO) dyes. UV–vis spectrophotometer is used for monitoring the degradation efficiency. Catalyst MKrGO shows 80% of MO and 77% of MB degradation within 120 min of sunlight exposure. The sustainability of this catalyst is checked by recyclability in five subsequent degradation cycles and noticed a stable and significant degradation activity.