Textile wastewater treatment using ternary hybrid nanocomposites of hexagonal NiO with MWCNT/GO

Abstract

The persistent rise in water pollution has spurred an urgent need to develop highly effective photocatalysts to eliminate hazardous organic pollutants. Photocatalytic degradation is one of the efficient methods to achieve this. In this study, we employ a hydrothermal technique to synthesize hexagonal NiO nanoparticles, which are subsequently decorated onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and graphene oxide (GO) through an ex-situ deposition followed by ultrasonic treatment. This has resulted in the construction of binary and ternary hybrid nanocomposites. An unprecedented high efficiency is achieved by the ternary composite due to the interfacial charge transfer by the MWCNT and GO deposited. An effective decrease in electron-hole pair recombination is observed, which is confirmed by their unique structural, morphological, electronic and optical properties. A dosage of 0.5 mg/mL of NiO degrades 57.3 % percent of the reactive red 35 dye with 20 ppm concentration. Meanwhile, the ternary hybrid nanocomposite NC5G5 (NiO/MWCNT/GO) exhibits excellent photocatalytic performance of 92.7 %, under the same conditions. These results underscore the promising potential of these composites for the efficient degradation of harmful organic pollutants in wastewater treatment applications.