Electrochemical synthesis of Zn:ZnO/Ni2P and efficient photocatalytic degradation of Auramine O in aqueous solution under multi-variable experimental design optimization

Abstract

Present work is devoted to synthesis Zn:ZnO/Ni2P by electrochemical method and identification and properties investigation by various techniques such as SEM, EDS, XRD and DRS. The experimental results reveal have ability for degradation of Auramine O (AO) following estimation of correlation among response to (main effect and variables interactions) variable like irradiation time, nanocomposite mass, pH and initial AO concentrations by a central composite design (CCD). The optimum condition for the photo-degradation of AO by photocatalyst was 6.72, 61.66 min, 13.13 mg L−1 and 0.014 g correspond to the pH, irradiation time, AO concentration and photocatalyst mass, respectively. At these optimum conditions, the AO photocatalytic degradation percentages with desirability of 0.94 was 95.47% using reasonable consumption of reagent. The quasi first-order kinetic model derived from Langmuir–Hinshelwood (L–H) efficiently represent real behavior of experimental data of correspond to under study system. The photocatalytic reaction, L–H rate constants and L–H adsorption constants for Zn:ZnO/Ni2P were 0.0375 min−1, 27.39 mg min−1 L and 0.00048 L mg−1, respectively.