Visible Light Driven Degradation of Congo Red Dye: A Highly Efficient Approach Using Polyaniline-rGO/Ni–Al DLH Composite

Enhanced photocatalytic degradation by ternary composite of nickel-aluminum double layer hydroxide (Ni–AlDLH) doped with polyaniline (PANI) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) has been studied in this work. The synthesized ternary composite (PANI 4% @rGO 1% /Ni–Al DLH) was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for structural, surface morphological and size investigation respectively. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to evaluate the surface chemical composition of ternary composite. The rate of charge recombination of ternary composite was performed by using Photoluminescence (PL). To evaluate the photocatalytic performance, the degradation efficiency of Congo Red (CR) dye under various conditions was employed; it demonstrated 54.18% to 94% improvements over pure Ni–Al DLH and PANI 4% @rGO 1% /Ni–Al DLH, at the end of 6 cycles of photocatalytic degradation, the PANI 4% @rGO 1% /Ni–Al DLH composites also demonstrated 94% efficiency for the photocatalytic degradation in visible light irradiation of CR dye in 120 minutes. A pseudo-first-order reaction model explained the degradation, based on kinetic studies. From the above findings, the ternary composite based on Ni–Al DLH can be effective photocatalysts for environmental remediation, which offering a workable method to improve the degradation of organic pollutants in wastewater treatment applications.