Photocatalytic activity of nanopolyaniline (NPA) on phenol degradation

Nanopolyaniline (NPA) has been synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline and characterized using Fourier transmission infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and ultra-violet visible techniques. XRD patterns confirm that NPA has crystallite size of 37 nm with monoclinic structure and UV-visible spectra indicate its band gap energy is 1.96 electron volts. Photocatalytic efficiency of as-synthesized NPA was studied using degradation of phenol as a probe. Effects of photocatalyst load, pH and phenol initial concentration on the degradation of phenol were investigated. Using phenol initial concentration (50 mg L-1) and optimum photocatalyst load (200 mgL-1) and pH 10, degradation of phenol at 3 h was 93.5%. Degradation of phenol follows first order kinetics with rate constant (k) 1.62×10-2 min-1. Key words: Degradation, photocatalytic efficiency, polyaniline, phenol, X-ray diffraction (XRD).