Visible light and UV-assisted photodegradation of phenylephrine by bulk NiO and NiO immobilized on magnetic polypyrrole support

Hossein Faghihian and Firoozeh Torki

The nanophotocatalysts; NiO and NiO immobilized on the surface of magnetized polypyrrole (NiO-PPY-Fe3O4) were synthesized and used for photodegradation of phenylephrine. The synthesized photocatalysts were characterized by FTIR, TG, XRD, BET, VSM, TEM and SEM techniques. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was used to measure the band gap nergy of the synthesized photocatalyst. Photoluminescence analysis was employed to estimate the electron-hole recombination. The results indicated that immoblization of NiO on the surface of the polypyrrole support increased its photocatalytic activity. Under visible light, the degradation efficiency obtained by bulk NiO was 38% which was increased to 71% after immobilization on the catalyst support. The increase was attributed to the shift of band gap energy to higher wavelenght as indicated by DRS tests, and to the lowering of electron–hole recombination as revealed by PL analysis. The catalyst support improved the regeneration ability of the photocatalyst. After five regeneration cycles, 90% of NiO-PPY-Fe3O4 activity was remained while for bulk NiO, the value was about 15%. The paramagnetic nature of NiO-PPY-Fe3O4 photocalyst facilitated its separation from the degradation solution without tedious filteration or centrifugation steps. In low concentrations, H2O2 showed an enhancing effect on the degradation but the effect was reversed in higher concentrations.

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Published on: Dec 31, 2019 Pages: 16-24

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/ijpsdr.000023
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