Removal of rhodamine blue dye from wastewaters by using perovskite@2D-layered nanostructured LaCoO3@g-C3N4 as super-nanosorbent material

To address water polluting hazardous and toxic dyes menace, we developed a novel LaCoO3@g-C3N4 composite, characterized it, and then employed it to adsorb rhodamine blue (RhB) from aqueous solutions. The synthesized nanomaterials consisted of LaCoO3 and Co3O4 phases of crystallite sizes 43.29 and 42.63 nm beside the nitride, with a surface area of 66.67 m(2).g(-1), and C, N, La, O, and Co as elemental composition, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction, BET and EDX analysis respectively. Batch sorption experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of LaCoO3@g-C3N4 nanopowder on RhB dye removal where the experimental data well fitted the Langmuir isotherm and the pseudo-second-order kinetics models, thus validating monolayer chemisorption via hydrogen bonding and p- p electrostatic interaction. The findings indicated a high adsorption capacity of 1226 mg.g(-1) and that the nanosorbent possessed good stability since it can be regenerated and reused efficiently with a very low retention rate of 90.8 %.

Automated summary

A novel LaCoO3@g-C3N4 composite material was developed and successfully used to adsorb rhodamine blue from aqueous solutions. The nanosorbent exhibited high adsorption capacity and good stability.