Treatment of Groundwater-Rich Organic Compounds Using Activated Carbon with Additional Germanium Dioxide (GeO2): Kinetics and Adsorption Studies of Methylene Blue and Congo Red

Abstract

Activated carbon/GeO2 composites were synthesized using the sol-gel method and then used as catalysts for the photodegradation of organic pollutants methylene blue (MB) and congo red (CR). The composites were characterized using an X-ray diffractometer and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to analyze the structure and chemical bonds of the composite materials, respectively. The ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption wavelength ranges of the composites toward the pollutants were 550-700 nm for MB and 450-550 for CR. The band gap energies of the composites were calculated, with the values found to be <4.5 eV. It was shown that the adsorption ability of the composites increased with the irradiation time of the pollutants. Furthermore, the adsorption kinetics data were found to be a good fit to a pseudo-first-order kinetics model.