Novel Mussaenda glabrata leaves extract for facile green synthesis of reduced graphene oxide with enhanced Rhodamine B dye removal efficiency

Abstract

Green synthesis is an eco-friendly technique concerning an alternate perspective of degrading harmful materials such as dyes, heavy metals, etc. by utilizing biological samples. In this paper, the appropriateness of novel Mussaenda glabrata (MG) is explored for accomplishing reduced graphene oxide (rGO) via facile green synthesis for the degradation of Rhodamine B dye. The characteristics of the graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) were analyzed using X-ray diffraction study, Raman Spectroscopy, Photoluminescence spectroscopy, UV–Visible spectrophotometry, FT-IR spectroscopy, TGA analysis, and Scanning Electron Microscopy. From the FT-IR data, it is investigated that the maximum reduction efficiency of the as-synthesised reduced graphene oxide sample attained using 100 ml of MG is about 66%. Furthermore, the MG-rGO sample exhibited an outstanding dye removal capacity with a maximum efficiency of about 98% under optimised conditions of an initial concentration of 4 ppm at 300 K, pH 7, and for a contact time of 40 min. Improved surface area, high electrostatic attraction, and π–π interaction are associated with the efficiency of adsorption of organic dye using rGO. This paper further investigates the kinetics study of adsorption which confirmed that adsorption follows pseudo-second-order kinetics. Moreover, the desorption study of the 100 ml MG rGO sample demonstrated an excellent recycling capacity.