Palladium-Supported Zirconia-Based Catalytic Degradation of Rhodamine-B Dye from Wastewater

Jabeen, Salma [University of Malakand] Sufaid Khan, Muhammad [University of Malakand] Khattak, Rozina [Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University] Zekker, Ivar [University of Tartu] Burlakovs, Juris [Estonian University of Life Sciences] Cornejo Rubin De Celis, Sergio Steven [UCL] Ghangrekar, Makarand Madhao [Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur] Kallistova, Anna [Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology] Pimenov, Nikolai [Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology] Zahoor, Muhammad [University of Malakand] Khan, Gul Shahzada [University of Bahrain] et al.[show all]

The catalytic activity of Pd/ZrO2 was studied in terms of the degradation of rhodamine-B dye in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Pd/ZrO2 was prepared by impregnation method, calcined at 750◦C and characterized by XRD, SEM and EDX. The catalyst showed good catalytic activity for dye degradation at 333 K, using 0.05 g of the catalyst during 5 h. The reaction kinetics followed the pseudo-first order kinetics. The Freundlich, Langmuir and Temkin isotherms were applied to the data and the best fit was obtained with Freundlich isotherm. Thermodynamic parameters, like ∆H, ∆G and ∆S were also calculated. The negative values of ∆H (−291.406 KJ/mol) and Gibbs free energy (∆G) showed the exothermic and spontaneous nature of the process. The positive ∆S (0.04832 KJ/mol K) value showed suitable affinity of catalyst for dye degradation. The catalyst was very stable, active and was easily separated from the reaction mixture by filtration. It can be concluded from the results that the prepared catalyst