Synthesis of modified zeolite and its photocatalytic activity towards dye degradation

Abstract

Development of new zeolite based materials is widely used in various applications such as catalysis, separations and medicine. Increasing the specific surface area and decreasing the pore diffusion path length in zeolites are important factors for improving the performance of
zeolites in catalytic applications and these factors can be optimized by decreasing the zeolite particle size. In this study modification of zeolite was carried out using nickel sulfide as a dopant and different concentrations of zeolite were synthesized at room temperature using precipitation method. Various characterizations such as XRD, FT-IR, FESEM, SEM, PL Spectroscopy, UV-Vis were carried out for these synthesized modified zeolite. XRD results revealed that the crystal size for the zeolite and the modified zeolite were 39.79 and 44.95 nm respectively. Morphology for the synthesized zeolites were evaluated through FESEM and
SEM analysis. The synthesized catalysts were also characterized by FT-IR and UV-Vis. In order to evaluate the efficiency of modified synthesis zeolite, a suitable photocatalytic reactor was designed. The synthesized catalysts were used for decolorization of three organic dyes
such as methylene blue, crystal violet and rhodamine b respectively. The decolorization rate were found out to be 88.624 %, 84.905 % and 60.506 % respectively for methylene blue, crystal violet and rhodamine b dye respectively.