Modification of ZnO/Perlite for Methylene Blue Photodegradation

Waste disposal in the growing industry causes pollution caused by pollutants.One of them is liquid waste from the textile industry which contains toxic dyes such as methylene blue which is difficult to decompose in the environment.Therefore, efforts are needed to overcome these problems by using photocatalysis.Photocatalyst materials that are often used are semiconducting metal oxides such as ZnO.However, ZnO semiconductors still have limitations in their application.To overcome these limitations, the ZnO catalyst will be modified with supporting materials such as perlite which is a lightweight and porous material.The synthesis method used in this research is impregnation.Impregnation is one of the methods in catalyst preparation which is done by adsorbing the active component of the metal in solution to the solid of the carrier.The purpose is to fill the pores of the carrier with a metal salt solution of a certain concentration.This research aims to test the effectiveness of ZnO/Perlite in degrading methylene blue.ZnO/Perlite composite with 20% composition showed the highest photocatalytic activity compared to ZnO/Perlite composite with 10% and 30% composition.The optimum condition of 20% ZnO/Perlite in degrading methylene blue was achieved at a mass of 0.3 g under pH 11 conditions, and stirring for 2 hr with ultraviolet light irradiation, and produced a photocatalytic activity of 47.59% and combined adsorption and photocatalytic activity of 78.1%.XRD analysis shows the characteristic wurtzite-structured ZnO crystal peaks at (100), ( 002), ( 101), ( 102), ( 110), (103), and (112), while the 2 diffraction angle (10-30) indicates the amorphous nature of perlite.DRS results show 20% ZnO/Perlite which has a band gap value of 3.21 eV.