Faculty of Humanities and Sciences

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://rda.sliit.lk/handle/123456789/4205

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Development of Silica-Copper Nanocomposite for Water Purification
    (SLIIT, 2022-02-11) Angappan, S; Karunaratne, M; Thambiliyagodage, C
    Water pollution is one of the serious concerns across the world at the moment. Industrial wastewater significantly contributes to the negative impacts caused by water pollution. Textile industries discharge large amounts of effluents into water streams with little or no treatment of the discharge because wastewater treatment is an expensive process. Thus, there exists a need for a cheap and effective way to treat textile effluent that contains dyes before being discharged. A high purity silica-based Nano-adsorbent was synthesized by using rice husk as the commercially available main cheap precursor. Copper-loaded silica nanoparticles were successfully functionalized with 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (APTES) via the sol-gel pathway to enhance the adsorption performance of organic dyes from textile effluent. The performance of produced Nano-adsorbent was evaluated by using methylene blue as waste adsorbate. As synthesized nanomaterial was characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, the XRD results confirmed the presence of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and paramelaconite (Cu4O3) as predicted. The FTIR confirmed the presence of Si–O stretching, N-H bending, C–H stretching, Cu–O stretching and O–H bending vibrations thereby suggesting the presence of SiO2, NH2 groups, CH2, Cu4O3 and physisorbed H2O. The optimum conditions for pH and adsorbent dosage were successfully evaluated for the adsorption process. The optimum pH at which the nanomaterial performed best was at pH 4. The optimum mass of the adsorbent that gave maximum adsorption performance was 20 mg. Kinetic studies revealed that the experimented data was in better correlation with pseudo-second-order kinetics. The outcome of this project would be of interest to textile industries looking for a cheap and effective way to treat textile wastewater
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationEmbargo
    Effect of Co-pollutants on the Photocatalytic Activity of Fe doped ZnO Nanoparticles on the Degradation of Methylene Blue
    (IEEE, 2022-07-18) Thambiliyagodage, C; Lokuge, N
    ZnO nanoparticles and Fe doped ZnO nanoparticles with varying Fe concentrations as 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, and 0.1% respective to Zn, was successfully synthesized by the sol-gel method. Synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy. As revealed by both studies Fe has successfully doped to ZnO without causing any lattice distortions. Synthesized catalysts were photocatalytically active in degrading methylene blue under sunlight. The effect of co-pollutants; Rhodamine B, Pb 2+ , PO43− and S2O32− on the rate of photodegradation was studied and it was found that Rhodamine B, Pb 2+ , and PO43− reduce the rate and S2O32− increases the rate of photodegradation.