Green Engineering of ZnO Nanoparticles Using Dypsis lutescens Extract: Characterization and Their Evaluation for Photocatalytic Degradation of an Anionic Red Me4BL Dye

A green, simple, sustainable, and robust synthetic approach has been employed to construct zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) for the first time by using an extract of the leaves of the plant Dypsis lutescens as a reducing and capping agent. Several analytical techniques have been used to characterize the synthesized ZnO NPs, including UV-visible spectroscopy, SEM, EDX, FTIR, and XRD. The findings indicated that the ZnO nanoparticles exhibited a spherical morphology, averaging 13 nm in size, and demonstrated a crystallinity of 66%. The ZnO NPs showed exceptional photocatalytic potential for degradation of an anionic Red Me4BL dye, with 71.17% degradation under sunlight and 63% degradation under tungsten lamp irradiation. Using the Langmuir-Hinshelwood integrated rate law, the kinetic studies showed that this reaction followed zero order. This work illustrated the potential of eco-friendly ZnO NPs for the degradation of various organic pollutants through photocatalysis.