The elimination of organic contaminants from water is a critical issue in the modern day. Fortunately, photocatalytic technology has showcased its efficiency to remediate refractory persistent organic pollutants. A well-known herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), is one such persistent organic pollutant in the majority of water sources. Herein, the photocatalytic activity of zinc sulfide/carbon (ZnS/C) was investigated in this work. Furthermore, The aforementioned nanocomposite was successfully created using the coprecipitation technique, and its constituent features were further examined using XRD, FTIR, FESEM, EDX, Zeta potential, and Tauc plot. The study aimed to optimize the following parameters: pH, pollutant concentration, contact time, and nanocomposite dose.
However, Maximum photocatalytic efficiency was 88.17 % at basic pH, for a pollutant concentration of 30 mg/L, with 0.8 mg/L of catalyst within 180 min of reaction. It is therefore the carbon doping with an active n-type semiconductor photocatalyst that boosted the photocatalytic action in the visible region Furthermore, for the next three cycles, ZnS/C had a fair degree of reusability. These experiments thus revealed that the ZnS/C nanocomposite that was created has great capabilities for 2,4-D remediation in an aqueous solution.
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