Cellulose acetate-Ce/Zr@Cu⁰ catalyst for the degradation of organic pollutant

In the present work, Cu nanoparticles were stabilized on ceria/zirconia (Ce/Zr@Cu⁰), cellulose acetate (CA@Cu⁰), and a thin film of cellulose acetate embedded ceria/zirconia (CA-Ce/Zr) designated as CA-Ce/Zr@Cu⁰. In the presence of a reducing agent, all the catalysts revealed excellent catalytic efficiency in aqueous media for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) and degradation of cationic dyes methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RB). Different order of equations were applied to determine the adjacent R² value and rate constant. Adjacent R² values for MB are 9.470, 9.422 and 9.050 and its kapp values per minutes are 1.7 × 10^-1, 8.3 × 10^-2, and 6. 7 × 10^-1 with Ce/Zr@Cu⁰, CA@Cu⁰, and CA-Ce/Zr@Cu⁰ derived from the pseudo 1st order kinetics, while in the absence of catalyst the R² and kapp for MB degradation in the presence of NaBH₄ is 0.8643 and 3.4 × 10^-3 respectively. Furthermore, regression models, ANOVA and correlation coefficients suggested that all the data are highly significant. The synthesized catalysts were applied for the simultaneous reduction/degradation of mixture of 4-NP-MB, 4-NP-RB and 4-NP-MB-RB mixture to check the practical applicability. Catalytic recyclability of CA-Ce/Zr@Cu⁰ catalyst dropped till 5th cycle which is due to the leaching of Cu⁰ NPs.