Treatment of wastewater dye using Ag–CdO-based nanocomposites surface modified with polyaniline

Currently, semiconductor-based photo-catalysis is found to be an effective treatment method for organic pollutant containing wastewater because of its simplest operation, minimal energy-consumption and generate negligible secondary pollutants. In this study, the surface modified Ag–CdO nanocomposites with polyaniline (PANI) (Ag–CdO/PANI NCs) was examined for the photo-degradation of wastewater organic dye [bromophenol blue (BPB)] discharged from Anmol Paper Products PLC, Ethiopia. With this regard, Ag–CdO NCs has prepared by the sol–gel method followed by in-situ oxidative polymerization of PANI, while the surface properties of as-synthesized materials have been investigated by XRD, UV–Vis, SEM and FT-IR spectroscopic techniques. Accordingly, the SEM images depicted the surface morphology of Ag–CdO/PANI NCs seems an agglomerated micron-scaled grains with smaller size as compared to CdO nanoparticles (NPs) and Ag–CdO NCs. The FT-IR spectrum showed that the absorption peaks are emerged corresponding to Cd–O, Ag–O and C–N plane deformation in Ag–CdO/PANI NCs. The XRD patterns demonstrated sharp and intensive diffraction peaks attributed to the existence of cubic CdO NPs and Ag–CdO NCs structure revealed the decreased crystalline size from 40.58 to 10.29 nm after Ag–CdO/PANI NCs formation. The most effective photodegradation of wastewater BPB dye has been achieved by Ag–CdO/PANI NCs with degradation efficiency of 98.64% at pH, catalyst load and visible light illumination time of 8, 0.16 g and 180 min, respectively. Thus, Ag–CdO/PANI catalyst could be enumerated as an alternative nanomaterial for the efficient removal of wastewater organic dyes.