Ecospheric Decontamination Attained via Green Nanobiotechnological NiO-Based Nanocatalyst Derived from Nature's...

Water contamination from dye effluents from various industrial sources has become a major challenge of the scientific community that is difficult to remediate using orthodox chemical and biological procedures. As such, there is a need for more suitable and cost-effective ways to treat such effluents. The present work describes a green-synthesis approach for preparation of three types of Ni-based oxides as effective catalytic materials to remove environmental pollutants. Metal oxide nanomaterials are cheap, abundant, and ecofriendly earth metals, and thus are promising materials for catalytic applications for environmental detoxification.

An aqueous leaf extract of Prunus persica was used as a reducing agent for the synthesis of NiO, NiO-PdO, and NiO-ZnO nanoparticles (NPs). The leaf extract was treated with each metal-salt precursor based on sol-gel synthesis, and then the final procured NPs were analyzed by spectroscopic techniques for structural and morphological makeup. The pure NPs were further explored for catalytic degradation of hazardous aqueous dye at ambient conditions, instead of following any sophisticated experimental conditions.

Morphological features revealed the pure formation of NiO, NiO-ZnO, and NiO-PdO NPs of size <100nm, characterized by X-ray diffraction spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Catalytic tests with methyl orange revealed the remediation potential of synthesized material, showing the pseudo-first order kinetics (R ²<1) for NiO, NiO-PdO, and NiO-ZnO. NiO-ZnO gave outstanding results both in dark (R ²=0.88) and light (R ²=0.82) with degradation percentage of 99% (dark) in comparison with the other two catalysts. Moreover, excellent catalyst stability for NiO-ZnO) was observed, even after the fourth cycle, under both light and dark conditions and was separated easily during centrifugation.

Although all three materials depicted the degradation potential with good stability, but the NiO-ZnO catalyst was the best catalytic material in the present investigation, with prominent degradation percentage, and can be considered as an efficient catalytic material. Thus, we conclude that P. persica-inspired catalytic material could pave the path toward environmental remediation, alternative clean energy, and other biological applications.