article · Scientific Reports
A green combustion method has been used to synthesise titanium dioxide, iron oxide, and titanium dioxide-iron oxide nanocomposites for wastewater treatment and energy storage. When evaluated under ultraviolet light irradiation at room temperature, the nanocomposite demonstrates higher photocatalytic activity for decolourising Titan Yellow and Methyl Orange dyes in aqueous solutions compared to the individual oxides, achieving significantly higher degradation rate constants. Physical characterisation shows a surface area of 71.56 square metres per gram and a mean pore diameter of 2.43 nanometres. In electrochemical testing, the nanocomposite operates effectively as a supercapacitor electrode material. It delivers stable performance over 1,000 cycles with approximately 100 percent coulombic efficiency at a scan rate of 10 millivolts per second, outperforming the pure oxides at a current density of 5 amperes per gram.
Developing dual-function materials that can degrade industrial chemical pollutants and store electrical energy supports cleaner manufacturing and energy efficiency. Using a green synthesis technique to produce stable nanocomposites provides a potential pathway to treat wastewater containing harmful dyes while simultaneously offering durable materials suitable for energy storage devices such as rechargeable supercapacitors.
This material could enable applications in industrial wastewater treatment facilities for dye removal and in rechargeable energy storage hardware as supercapacitor electrodes. The work is at an early-stage laboratory level, having demonstrated performance on synthetic dye solutions under ultraviolet light and across standard electrochemical bench tests over 1,000 cycles. Substantial scaling, device-level integration, and testing in complex real-world effluents or industrial battery packs would be required prior to commercial adoption.
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Abstract This work reveals a green combustion route for the synthesis of TiO 2 , Fe 2 O 3 and TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanocomposites as photocatalysts for decolorization of Titan Yellow (TY) and Methyl Orange (MO) dyes at room temperature in aqueous solution concentration of 20 ppm under UV-light irradiation. We observed that the TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanocomposite shows superior photocatalytic activity for TY dye compared to pure TiO 2 and Fe 2 O 3 . Rate constant (k) values of TiO 2 , Fe 2 O 3 and TiO 2 –Fe 2 O 3 for TY and MO are 0.0194, 0.0159, 0.04396 and 0.00931, 0.00772 0.0119 kmin −1 respectively. The surface area and pore volume of TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanocomposite were found to be 71.56 m 2 /g and 0.076 cm 3 /g, respectively as revealed by BET studies. From the Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH) plot, the mean pore diameter of TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles was found to be 2.43 nm. Further, the TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanocomposite showed good electrochemical behavior as an electrode material for supercapacitors when compared to pure TiO 2 and Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles resulted in stable electrochemical performance with nearly 100% coulombic efficiency at a scan rate of 10 mV/s for 1000 cycles. Interestingly, the novelty of this work is that the designed supercapacitors showed stable electrochemical performance even at 1000 th cycle, which might be useful for rechargeable supercapacitor applications. The electrochemical properties of the nanocomposites were compared by the data obtained by cyclic voltammograms, charge-discharge tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopic studies. These results demonstrated that the TiO 2 -Fe 2 O 3 nanocomposite showed stable performance compared to TiO 2 and Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles at current density of 5 Ag −1 .
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DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-58110-7
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