GREEN AND COST EFFECTIVE PREPARATION OF COPPER OXIDE NANOPARTICLES USING WITHANIA COAGULANS FOR THE PHOTOCATALYTIC REMOVAL OF ORGANIC EFFLUENTS FROM WASTEWATER

Abstract

The metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs) play an important role in heterogeneous photodegradation and removal of organic dyes from water sources. This method is more preferable for being ecofriendly as compared to the other methods having low cost and no use of high temperature, pressure or other parameters. Previous studies have demonstrated that CuO exhibits significant photocatalytic activity. Subsequently, in the present study the CuO NPs were synthesized using aqueous extract of Withania Coagulans berries with copper sulphate pentahydrate (CuSO₄.5H₂O) served as precursor. The characterization of the synthesized NPs was carried out using UV-Visible spectroscopy to determine the characteristic absorption peak, which was observed at 296nm. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) was used to study the functional groups and to detect any impurities present in the NPs due to plant extract. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) study was carried out to examine the crystalline nature of synthesized NPs while the surface morphology was assessed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The photocatalytic degradation efficiency of biologically fabricated NPs was tested against the potentially harmful dye methylene blue (MB) under sunlight as the light source. Factors affecting degradation efficiency like photocatalyst dosage, initial dye concentration and pH of the solution were optimized over a time range of 5 to 115 minutes. Under the optimized parameters the CuO NPs showed high degradation efficiency of around ≈96% after 115 minutes which is significantly higher as compared to the previously reported works.