RASHMI PALIWAL, RITU TOMAR AND RENU RATHORE
Abstract
The persistent contamination of industrial waste water by recalcitrant organic dyes, such as Crystal Violet(CV), Malachite Green(MG), Toluidine blue(TB) poses a severe environmental and health risk. Heterogeneous photocatalysis driven by visible light is a promising, green technology for the efficient degradation of these pollutants. In this study a novel ternary AgI/ZnO/?-Fe2O3 nanocomposite photocatalyst via a simple precipitation and calcination method, designed to leverage the visible light activity of both AgI and ?-Fe2O3 while utilizing ZnO as a stable host. XRD, FESEM, EDS and DRS analysis confirmed the successful phase formation and significantly enhanced visible light absorption capability across the solar spectrum. The synthesized and its photocatalytic efficient were evaluated by monitoring the degradation of Crystal Violet under visible light radiation. A tentative mechanism has been proposed for photo catalytic decomposition of CV dye.