Treatment of Wastewater Using Conducting Polymer/Magnetite (Fe3O4) Based Magnetic Adsorbent Materials

Synthetic organic dyes are widely used in various industries such as textile, paper, cosmetics, and leather industries. These industries discharge various kind of dyes in the natural water sources which results in the bioaccumulation of these dye molecules in the natural biotas. These dyes form a reflective layer on the surface of water which curtails the amount of solar radiation penetration which results in suppression of photosynthesis and reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen in water. In this research, we are synthesizing magnetic nanocomposite of polyaniline that possess photocatalytic activity and can be easily removed from the water after the application. First, we have synthesized conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI) via oxidative polymerization using ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS) as an initiator for the polymerization process. Magnetite (Fe3O4) magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) were synthesized via co-precipitation method. Composite material PANI/Fe3O4 was synthesized via in-situ oxidative polymerization of aniline in the presence of Fe3O4 MNPs at 1:0.25 wt% ratio of aniline. All the synthesized materials were characterized using FT-IR, XRD, and FE-SEM characterization methods. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized materials was evaluated using dark adsorption study and photocatalytic degradation studies on methylene blue (MB) dye. Figure 1 depicts the recovery of magnetic photocatalyst after the treatment of wastewater using external magnetic force.