The Effective Photocatalytic and Solid Acid Catalytic Behaviour of Novel Bismuth Oxy Chloride Nanomaterial

Abstract

In this article, superior photoactive BiOCl nanomaterial was successfully synthesized and characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SEM, EDS, ECM and UV-DRS analysis respectively. The XRD results showed that BiOCl was in tetragonal primitive crystal structure with size of 67 nm. The synthesized BiOCl nanomaterial was employed as a catalyst to remove methyl orange from the aqueous solution by varying the operational parameters such as pH, catalyst concentration, and reusability using Photocatalytic method. The maximum degradation of dye was attained at 97% under the optimum conditions of 6 pH & 1.4 g L^-1 catalyst concentration. Besides, their removal efficiencies were not much lower even after five repeated cycles. Moreover, BiOCl nanocatalyst was used as a solid acid catalyst for the effective synthesis of some chalcones. Hence, the synthesized nanocatalyst could be applied for tertiary process in pilot scale in continuous mode for the treatment of wastewater.