Sunlight Assisted Photocatalytic Degradation of Methyl Red using g-C3N4 as Metal-free Photocatalyst

Abstract

Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are propitious technologies for the degradation of recalcitrant organic impurities such as dye. Photocatalysis is one of the efficient methods to degrade and mineralize the complex dye molecule and produce non-toxic intermediate and end products. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is an environmentally approachable potent non-metal photocatalyst as it works under visible light, is inexpensive, has a moderate band gap of 2.7 eV, and is easy to prepare. In the current study, g-C3N4 was synthesized by calcination method. The prepared catalyst was characterized by XRD, FTIR, and SEM analysis. The degradation of methyl red (MR) was studied under various operational conditions. The effect of initial MR concentration, g-C3N4 dose, and pH were examined. From the experimental results, it was found that the degradation efficiency of 10 mg/L of MR was found to be ~97% for 0.8 g/L of g-C3N4 dose and around 30000 lux of sunlight irradiation for 120-minute duration.