Abstract
Organic pollutants have been established as serious hazards to living organisms mainly due to byproducts of numerous industries, which not only pollute surface water resources but also contaminate the ground water. The halogenated derivatives of phenols produced from a variety of industries, have attained much more attention due to considerable occurrence in polluted water, high resistance and solubility towards removal. The present study aimed to develop a technology which is economical and efficient in degradation of toxic pollutants. Solar photocatalysis was employed for this purpose. A composite material using ZnO with optimum concentration of Mn3O4 was synthesized with the purpose to work under natural solar light exposure. The catalyst was tested for its treatment efficiency using two toxic organic pollutants i.e. 4-Bromophenol and 4-Chlorophenol. The results showed that the both pollutants were efficiently removed (>95 %) under photocatalysis within 240 minutes of exposure to sunlight. The highest rate of degradation per unit time was achieved after 20 minutes. Furthermore, the catalyst showed the promising reusability for up to 4 tested cycles for degradation of organic pollutants. These findings revealed that this process could be highly economical and energy efficient because there was no requirement of any additional light (where natural sunlight was effectively used), more catalysts can be used for multiple times thus reducing the cost of materials required.