Palladium and Graphene Oxide Doped ZnO for Aqueous Acetamiprid Degradation under Visible Light

Abstract

Acetamiprid is a neonicotinoid insecticide widely used in pest control. In recent years, it has been considered as a contaminant in groundwater, lakes, and rivers. Photocatalysis under visible light radiation proved to be an effective process for getting rid of several organic pollutants. In the present work, photodegradation of aqueous acetamiprid was investigated over bare zinc oxide (ZnO) photocatalyst as well as ZnO doped with either palladium or palladium combined with graphene oxide. Both ZnO and doped-ZnO were synthesized via a microwave-assisted hydrothermal procedure. The obtained photocatalysts were characterized using different techniques. After 5 h of reaction at ambient temperature under visible light irradiation, acetamiprid conversions attained ca. 38, 82, and 98% in the presence of bare ZnO, Pd-doped ZnO and Pd-GO-doped ZnO photocatalysts, respectively, thus demonstrating the positive effect of Pd- and GO-doping on the photocatalytic activity of ZnO. In addition, Pd-GO-doped ZnO was shown to keep its activity even when it is recycled five times, thus proving its stability in the reaction medium.

Aqueous Acetamiprid Degradation Using Combined Ultrasonication and Photocatalysis Under Visible Light

“…Furthermore, developing efficient water and wastewater treatment processes is utmost importance to mitigate water pollution and promote water reuse and recycling. Photocatalytic degradation of aqueous acetamiprid over N-GO-ZnO and Pd-GO-ZnO composites proved to be effective (Miyashiro & Hamoudi, 2021 , 2022 ); however, this approach was shown to be time consuming. The present investigation demonstrates eloquently that the hybrid approach integrating photocatalysis and sonolysis is remarkably beneficial as it allowed to drastically shorten the reaction time yielding the complete removal of acetamiprid.…”

“…The catalysts were characterized using state of the art characterization techniques as previously reported by Miyashiro and Hamoudi ( 2021 and 2022 ).…”

Automated Recognition of Nanoparticles in Electron Microscopy Images of Nanoscale Palladium Catalysts

“…The highest catalyst performance with ~10 9 turnover numbers was recently achieved with Pd/C catalysts [ 8 ]. Representative applications also include sensing [ 9 , 10 ], hybrid nanomaterials design [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ], development of Pd-decorated nanosystems on various forms of carbon [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], and biosynthesis [ 18 ], among many others.…”