Abstract
In the present work, Cu nanoparticles were stabilized on ceria/zirconia (Ce/Zr@Cu-0), cellulose acetate (CA@Cu-0), and a thin film of cellulose acetate embedded cerialzirconia (CA-Ce/Zr) designated as CA-Ce/Zr@Cu-0. In the presence of a reducing agent, all the catalysts revealed excellent catalytic efficiency in aqueous media for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) and degradation of cationic dyes methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RB). Different order of equations were applied to determine the adjacent R-2 value and rate constant. Adjacent R-2 values for MB are 9.470, 9.422 and 9.050 and its kapp values per minutes are 1.7 x 10(-1), 8.3 x 10(-2), and 6.7 x 10(-1) with Ce/Zr@Cu-0, CA@Cu-0, and CA-Ce/Zr@Cu-0 derived from the pseudo 1st order kinetics, while in the absence of catalyst the R-2 and kapp for MB degradation in the presence of NaBH4 is 0.8643 and 3.4 x 10(-3) respectively. Furthermore, regression models, ANOVA and correlation coefficients suggested that all the data are highly significant. The synthesized catalysts were applied for the simultaneous reduction/degradation of mixture of 4-NP-MB, 4-NP-RB and 4-NP-MB-RB mixture to check the practical applicability. Catalytic recyclability of CA-Ce/Zr@Cu-0 catalyst dropped till 5th cycle which is due to the leaching of Cu(0)NPs. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.