Abstract
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•Metal oxides nanomaterials.•Solar light photodegradation.•Active species determination and mechanism.
Metal oxides based on Cu-Sr, Sr-Cd and Cd-Cu were synthesized by mild and cost effective co-precipitation method. XRD and SEM were utilized in order to investigate the phase structure, composition and morphology of as synthesized metal oxides. Crystallite size calculated through XRD was found to be 40.36, 49.97 and 82.62 nm for Cu-Sr, Sr-Cd and Cd-Cu metal oxides whereas, SEM indicated particle size ranged from (44–88)nm. Elemental contents, functional groups and thermal stability of these metal oxides were determined via XPS, FTIR and TGA. Band gap energies were measured as 1.57, 1.64 and 1.61 eV while, BET analysis indicated surface area ∼9.86, 1.99 and 49.78m2/g with total pore volume/average aperture size ∼0.0348 ml/g/1.0934 nm, 0.0127 ml/g/0.1101 nm and 0.1080 ml/g/0.9254 nm for Cu-Sr, Sr-Cd, and Cd-Cu metal oxides respectively. These metal oxides were used as photocatalysts for the degradation of MB and MO dyes under solar light irradiation showing higher catalytic activity with 86, 78 and 67 % degradation for MB dye, while 80, 50 and 69 % degradation was observed for MO dye within total time of 180 min. Effect of various operational parameters such as catalyst loading, pH, and various scavengers was evaluated in detail. Morever, in-situ investigations were also carried out in order to determine the active species and hence the mechanism for catalytic reactions. These results for dye detoxification and corresponding reaction mechanism suggested the synthesized metal oxides as promising candidates for real toxic water wastes cleanup applications.