Solar driven photocatalytic degradation potential of novel graphitic carbon nitride based nano zero-valent iron doped bismuth ferrite ternary composite

Abstract

The synthetic industry has destroyed the life span of human beings due to environmental pollution. The discharged organic pollutants can be degraded by many physicochemical techniques, among them the heterogeneous photocatalysis is distinctive. Nano zero-valent iron (NZVI) doped bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) nanoparticles were composited with g-C3N4 to fabricate ternary NZVI@BiFeO3/g-C3N4 semiconductor photocatalyst. The facile fabrication was achieved through the hydrothermal approach. The characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared and Scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray was used. The analysis confirmed the successful fabrication of the photocatalysts. The energy bandgaps of the prepared photocatalysts were measured by the Tauc plot method using a UV–visible spectrophotometer. The energy bandgap values suggest that the insertion of g-C3N4 improves the optical response of catalysts under visible light. The NZVI@BiFeO3/g-C3N4 was employed against Rhodamine B dye for photocatalytic oxidative degradation under sunlight radiations. The influencing parameters like pH, NZVI@BiFeO3/g-C3N4 concentration, oxidant dose, reaction time were optimized to obtain the best-suited conditions. Under optimized conditions (i.e. pH = 9, NZVI@BiFeO3/g-C3N4 = 10 mg/100 mL, oxidant = 18 mM, Time = 120 min) the g-C3N4 based composite photocatalyst showed ~97% oxidative degradation of Rhodamine B. Response surface methodology was used as a statistical tool to check the combinational effect of influencing parameters.