Photocatalytic degradation of cyanide using polyurethane foam immobilized Fe-TCPP-S-TiO₂-rGO nano-composite

An attempt has been made for the treatment of cyanide contaminated wastewater using a S-TiO₂@rGO heterogeneous photocatalyst system immobilized on polyurethane foam (PUF) supporting materials. Further, to make the photocatalytic system more efficient and active under visible light, a highly efficient iron porphyrin derivative sensitizer viz. Fe-TCPP was synthesized and employed for cyanide degradation. To investigate the synthesized heterogeneous nano-composite S-TiO₂@rGO-FeTCPP photocatalytic system, advanced techniques such as XRD, XPS, FT-IR, PL spectra, UV-vis DRS, FESEM, and EDS were utilized. The photocatalytic performance of the nanocomposite was evaluated in a suspended system and results revealed that about 75% of cyanide degradation was obtained at 100 mg/L of initial cyanide within 2 h. Whereas, at the same condition, more than 91% of cyanide degradation as well as 88% toxicity removal occurred by the PUF immobilized S-TiO2@rGO-FeTCPP solid-state photocatalytic system. First-order kinetics was applied to investigate the degradation of cyanide by the photocatalytic nanocomposite. From the kinetic study, the estimated first-order rate constant (K_f) in a solid-state photocatalytic system of the nanocomposite was 1.7 times superior to that of the suspended system. Further, the rate of photocatalytic activity was nearly 10.8 times greater than that of pure TiO₂. This study demonstrated that the immobilized S-TiO2@rGO-FeTCPP photocatalytic system could be an efficient technique for degrading cyanide from industrial effluent.