article · ACS Omega
Industrial release of congo red dye into waterways poses serious health risks, including cancer, skin irritation, and allergic reactions. To address this issue, magnesium aluminate nanoparticles were prepared using a straightforward and cost-effective Pechini sol-gel technique to serve as photocatalysts. Detailed material characterisation established that the nanoparticles possessed an average crystal size of 10.36 nanometres, an optical bandgap of 3.71 electronvolts, and spherical nanostructures averaging 8.75 nanometres in diameter. When deployed against congo red dye in laboratory trials, the nanomaterial broke down 99.27 per cent of the pollutant within 80 minutes at an acidic pH of 3. Furthermore, the nanoparticles maintained stable catalytic performance over four testing cycles, confirming their durability and capacity for repeated reuse in pollutant breakdown.
Congo red dye released by factories poses notable environmental and public health hazards, including skin irritation and links to cancer. Finding sustainable, reusable materials capable of neutralising such pollutants is crucial for industrial water treatment. Demonstrating that simple, sol-gel derived nanoparticles can achieve near-total breakdown of the dye over multiple cycles provides a foundation for more efficient, durable wastewater purification systems.
This work points towards applications in industrial wastewater treatment, particularly for facilities discharging textile or chemical dyes. Potential end users include effluent treatment plant operators and environmental remediation firms. However, because the technology has only been tested at bench scale on 50 millilitre volumes under controlled acidic conditions, it remains in the early stages of research, requiring scaled testing with realistic mixed effluents before commercial application is feasible.
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The discharge of congo red dye into water sources by factories has been associated with a range of health concerns, such as cancer, redness, skin irritation, and allergic reactions. As a result, this research focused on the cost-effective and straightforward production of MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> nanoparticles by using the Pechini sol-gel process. Subsequently, these nanoparticles were employed for the successful photocatalytic decomposition of congo red dye. Moreover, extensive characterization of the fabricated MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> nanoparticles was conducted through diverse methodologies, which included Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD). Furthermore, the XRD analysis disclosed that the average crystal size of the produced MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> nanoparticles is 10.36 nm, and their optical energy gap was determined to be 3.71 eV. The FE-SEM examination unveiled a combination of spherical and disorganized structures with a 0.14 μm average grain size. HR-TEM analysis, in turn, revealed that the fabricated MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> nanoparticles were composed of minuscule spherical particles with an average diameter of 8.75 nm. The maximum degradation of 50 mL of congo red dye at a concentration of 25 mg/L reached 99.27% within 80 min at a pH of 3. Additionally, the findings confirmed the consistent decomposition activity toward congo red dye even after four cycles, thereby validating the effectiveness and reusability of the MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> nanoparticles that were developed in this study.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.3c08485
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