Study of Photocatalytic degradation of Congo red pollutants using microwave derived SrFe12O19

Abstract

The report talks about the degradation of Congo red under visible light using SrFe12O19. The synthesis of SrFe12O19 material using microwave combustion method followed by calcination at 950C for 3 hrs yields the particle size of less than 120 nm with the surface area of 5.5 m2/g. The diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and theoretical calculat-ion using density functional theory show that its band gap is ~1.65 eV. The photocatalytic results show that the degradation of CR steadily increases with the exposure time of visible light and it is more than 90% efficiency at 180 min. Moreover, it is observed that the photocataly-tic degradation efficiency is enhanced nearly 10% at low exposure time of visible light by using 5% Al doped SrFe12O19 catalyst. The measurement of the magnetic prop-erties of SrFe12O19 show that the magnetization and coercivity are 52 emu/g and 5400 Oe, respectively, showing the catalyst can be separated from the reaction chamber by applying low strength magnetic field. The results reveal that it is an efficient single-component based magnetic photocatalyst and easy to synthesize in comparison to the two-components based core-shell type magnetic photocatal-yst.