Photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange using ZnO and Fe doped ZnO: A comparative study

ZnO and 2% Fe doped ZnO photocatalytic nanomaterials were successfully synthesized by successive ionic layer adsorption and the reaction (SILAR) method. The characterizations of these nanomaterials were carried out using XRD, SEM and EDX techniques. XRD study shows that the samples have a hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure, size of which is in the range 21-23 nm. SEM shows nanoflakes or nano flower-like morphology, while EDX reveals the compositional analysis. In this paper, we investigated photocatalytic degradation of an aqueous suspension of methyl orange (MO) dye as a model pollutant. Degradation of dye was monitored by the spectrophotometric method. The effects of various parameters such as pH, contact time, initial dye concentration and catalyst dose were studied. in optimized process, the maximum degradation obtained using ZnO was 88 % and that using Fe doped ZnO was 94 % at a pH value of 8. We have concluded that, compared to ZnO, the 2% Fe doped ZnO is a promising photocatalyst for degradation of MO.