Chemical and thermal study of metal chalcogenides (zinc sulfide), aluminum oxide, and graphene oxide based nanocomposites for wastewater treatment

Abstract

Several mixing tactics are employed to form nanocomposites so as to achieve the aimed applicable potential. The zinc sulfide (ZnS), aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3 ), and graphene oxide (GO) NCs are examined by many techniques. To begin with, structural and morphological inspection, are studied via XRD, FTIR, EDX, SEM, and TEM techniques, followed by a thermal study using TGA, and thermodynamic behavior. ZnS/Al 2 O 3 appeared in porous surface structure by an average size of 75 nm for ZnS grains, and 55 nm for Al 2 O 3 . Ternary nanocomposite (TNCs) show a significant decrease in grains aggregation tendency, and size (Al 2 O 3 circular grains record 40 nm). Roughness average of aluminum oxide is almost doubled by GO insertion which jumps from 1.2 to 2.2 nm. EDX results point to the high purity of ternary NC. Coats-Redfern (CR) resultant thermodynamic values are agreeing with Horowitz–Metzger (HW), for instance, ZnS/GO activation energy is 413.38 kJ mol −1 by CR, while it hits 420.25 kJ mol −1 by HW methodology. Recyclability demonstrates a slight decline in MB degradation efficiency by multi-usage of such compositions, for example, ZnS/Al 2 O 3 /GO degradation efficiency is decreased from 95.8 to 87.5%.