Abstract
Currently, the air and water pollutions are presenting the most serious global concerns. Despite the well known tremendous efforts, it could be a promising sustainability if the black carbon (BC) soot can be utilized for the practical and sustainable applications. For this, the almost complete aqueous phase photodegradation of the three well-known organic pollutant dyes as crystal violet (CV); rhodamine B (RhB); methylene blue (MB) and their mixture (CV + RhB + MB), by using water-soluble graphene nanosheets (wsGNS) isolated from the BC soot under the influence of natural sunlight is described. The plausible mechanism behind the photocatalytic degradation of dyes and their mixture has been critically analyzed via the trapping of active species and structural analysis of photodegraded products. The impact of diverse interfering ions like Ca2+, Fe3+, SO42−, HPO42−, NO3−, and Cl− on the photodegradation efficiency of wsGNS was also investigated. Importantly, the environmental assessment of the whole process has been evaluated towards the growth of wheat plants using the treated wastewater. The initial studies for the fifteen days confirmed that growth of wheat plants was almost the same in the photodegraded wastewater as being noticed in the control sample, while in case of dyes contaminated water it showed the retarded growth. Using the natural sunlight, the overall sustainability of the presented work holds the potential for the utilization of pollutant soot in real-practical applications related to the wastewater remediation and further the practical uses of treated water.
Highlights
The ever-growing desire to improve the quality of human lifestyle significantly promoted the rapid industrialization and urbanization[1,2,3]
Under the presence of sunlight, the same can be provided by the water-soluble graphene nanosheets, isolated from the black carbon (BC) possessing the advantageous efficiency to work as a photocatalytic material[24,25]
The present finding describes a simple and feasible approach related to the utilization of the pollutant soot as a low-cost, available precursor for the isolation of water-soluble graphene nanosheets (wsGNS). wsGNS was further utilized as photocatalyst for the complete photodegradation of three individual dyes like crystal violet (CV), rhodamine B (RhB) and methylene blue (MB) and their mixture (CV + RhB + MB) under the natural sunlight irradiation
Summary
The ever-growing desire to improve the quality of human lifestyle significantly promoted the rapid industrialization and urbanization[1,2,3]. Few groups have explored the recent-promising approaches related to the adaptation of pollutant soot as freely available carbon precursor for the synthesis/isolation of the value-added nano-carbons[21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29] Such as carbon dots (CD)[23], graphene nanosheets (GNS)[24,25,27], single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT)[26], carbon nanoparticles[22] used for the diverse applications[22,23,27] including the photodegradation of the pollutant dyes[24,25]. Initial results are in favor that treated wastewater could be used for growing the plants that can maintain the ecological balance of the required water
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