Synthesis of photocatalyst Zinc Oxide for the treatment of organic contaminants

Abstract

Phenol is the one of the hazardous contaminant that contains in wastewater commonly in industrial effluent. The unique properties of nanoparticles size of zinc oxides have been paid more attention due to its photosensitive properties and efficiency in degradation of organic contaminant. Thus the main objective of this study is to synthesis of photocatalyst zinc oxide for the treatment of organic contaminant. The zinc oxide is successfully synthesized by precipitation and sol-gel method. The parameters of synthesis such as effect of precursor, solvent and calcination temperature were investigated. The operating parameters such as effect of catalyst load, pH of phenol and concentration of phenol were studied. The zinc oxide that synthesized using sol-gel method shows the well performance which able to degrade 100 % concentration of phenol in 2 hours irradiation. In addition, the evaluation of kinetic study using Langmuir-Hinshelwood Kinetic Model shows the value of correlation coefficient for sol-gel method is 0.9807, higher than value of correlation coefficient for precipitation method. As a conclusion, the best method in synthesized of zinc oxide is sol-gel methods which are synthesized using low calcination temperature which is 400 °C.