Photocatalytic degradation of acid orange 7 dye in the presence of CuO/Al2O3 nanocomposite

Waste water containing dyes originating from textile industrials is strongly toxic and carcinogenic. Therefore reducing dyes pollution, it is desirable to degrade the dye into nontoxic form before it is entered into nature, a wide range of remediation techniques as: biological, physical, and chemical methods have been applied for water decontamination [1,2]. Photocatalytic degradation is one of the most excellent green chemistry technology to convert the dyes due to its nontoxicity, inexpensive and harm- less by products. Al2O3 was used as a catalyst for the photo degradation organic dyes [3]. Introduction of some transition metals, such as Cr, V, Fe, Cu, Mn, Co, Ni, Mo etc. may lead to higher catalytic activity [4]. Concluded that the presence of a semiconductor like (TiO2, ZnO, CuO and other) with Al2O3 lead to synergism between them, which improved their photocatalytic performance. In the present study, we synthesized a novel, simple and green method for the synthesis of synergism CuO/AL2O3 nanocomposite using natural gel as a biotemplate source by the means of sol-gel method and its photocatalytic dye degradation ability from aqueous solution were investigated. The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized by XRD, EDX, FT-IR, UV-visible spectroscopy. The effects of process parameters like, catalyst dosage, initial dye concentration, and visible light irradiation on dye degradation have been studied. The results displayed that catalytic activity of CuO/AL2O3 being more effective than CuO for degradation Acid orange 7.