Degradation of methyl red using Cd-Sb/C layered double hydroxide catalyst under visible light

Abstract

This research work presents the degradation of Methyl red using cadmium-antimony-carbon (Cd-Sb/C) catalyst under visible light. The double layered hydroxide was successfully prepared from cadmium fluoride (CdF₂), antimony chloride (SbCl₃), and rice husks activated carbon, and then characterized by X-ray Diffaractometry (XRD) Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) methods. The peaks at 2Ө 10.0, 23.4 and 35.5 in the XRD result confirmed the presence of double layered hydroxide. The effect of catalyst dosage, pH and initial concentration, on the photo degradation of Methyl red was investigated. The experimental results showed that after 100 min visible light irradiation, the percentage degradation using 200 mg Cd-Sb/C, pH 5 and 3ppm Methyl red concentration reached to 50.36%. For kinetics studies the data obtained were analysed using pseudo first order and pseudo second order kinetic models. From the linear regression coefficient values the data were found to be best fitted to pseudo second order kinetics. The results revealed that the Cd-Sb/C show good catalytic activity.