Kinetics of degradation of Rhodamine B onto natural and calcined carbon-doped Ca0.5Sr0.5MoO4

The problem of water pollution can be treated in more sustainable and environmentally safe ways by developing new catalysts from natural sources. In this work, naturally carbon-doped strontium calcium molybdate was developed by using egg white foam. The catalyst was characterized by using several techniques, including FTIR, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, photoluminescence investigations, FE-SEM, EDX, BET and XRD analyses. The catalyst was thermally activated at 350 °C and investigated for the removal of Rhodamine B (RhB) from water. The results showed that the removal efficiency of RhB increased by increasing the dose for the catalyst before and after thermal treatment. The optimum pH for the removal of RhB from water was pH 3. The degradation of RhB exceeded 89.6 and 83% at 20 mgL-1 at dose 0.005 g and pH 3 for the catalyst after and before calcination, respectively. The results suggest the successful development of carbon-doped Ca0.5Sr0.5MoO4 from a sustainable and safer natural source for water remediation purposes.