Catalytic degradation of organic dyes using metallic nanoparticles

Nowadays, there is a growing need for methods that contribute to the environmental protection and help increase the human well – being and, therefore, different pollutants are studied: pharmaceuticals, hormones, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dyes. Among them, a special attention needs to be paid to dyes and especially organic dyes due to the fact that their accumulation in water bodies s responsible for reducing the reoxygenation ability killing the marine organisms by blocking the sunlight. Photocatalytic degradation using metallic nanoparticles has numerous advantages to the conventional route of quick oxidation because neither polycyclic compounds nor the oxidation of different pollutants appears. This research paper describes the use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and ferrite nanoparticles
(Fe3O4NPs) for the catalytic degradation of three azoic dyes: Direct Orange 26
(DO26), Direct Black 38 (DBk38) and Direct Brown 2 (DBr2). Silver nanoparticles
were prepared using a “green chemistry” approach from aqueous extracts of different
plants with important health benefits: Gooseberry, Acacia and Jujube. The
degradation of DO26 was also investigated under direct sunlight using TiO2, ferrite
nanoparticles and Fenton reagent.