SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF AMINE FUNCTIONALIZED ZIRCONIUM METAL ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS FOR PHOTOCATALYTIC DEGRADATION OF METHYL ORANGE

Abstract

The environmental pollution caused by any organic dye-containing wastewaters in textile, plastic, pulp, and paper industry is one of key problems. For this reason, UiO-66 and UiO-66- NH2, photocatalysts were synthesized in different options by solvothermal and hydrot hermal method at Room Temperature and High Temperature condition to remove dyes from aqueous solution as well as real sample. Hence, Zirconium MOFs samples were synthesised successfully at Room Temperature and High Temperature with solvent Di-ionized Water and with DMF, respectively. Zr-MOFs samples were characterized for thermal stability, structure and crystallinity, topology, band gap energy, surface area and porosity, the presence of organic functional groups and optical intensity by TGA, XRD, SEM, UV-Vis, BET, FTIR and PL, respectively. The synthesized MOFs show, high thermal stability, excellent crystallinity, higher surface area, larger pore volume and less optical intensity. In this study, the effects of key parameters were examined to find out the optimum operating conditions of the photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange dye using Zr-MOFs under visible light radiation. The photocatalytic degradations of MO using all the as-synthesized photocatalysts were investigated under visible light irradiation. High performance of UiO-66-NH2-DMF-TEA-HT towards degradation under visible light was observed. In effect, its lower PL intensity and the smaller band gap energy have enhanced the photocatalytic process by prolonging the electron-hole recombination. In addition, amine-functionalized Zirconium MOFs have better degradation efficiency than non-functionalized MOFs. Moreover, UiO-66-NH2-TEA can be easily regenerated and re-used for several times, which show this photocatalyst could have large potential for the degradation of dye-containing wastewater. Finally, the experimental results of selected MOFs were effective for the removal of MO aqua solution (88.93%) and real sample textile wastewater (71.24%).