Production of zirconia materials from zircon for dye removal from wastewater

Abstract

Zirconia (ZrO2) is a noteworthy metal oxide because of its characteristics. It can be implemented in different applications; adsorption of pollutant, and photocatalytic oxidation. The main focus of this research was to synthesize ZrO2 from low cost and locally available materials; zircon. As well the preparation of ZrO2 was conducted at different temperature procedures. Characterization of prepared materials was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) which confirmed the production of homogeneous spherical crystalline ZrO2 compared with commercial ZrO2. Moreover, ZrO2-500 was examined for removal of dye using adsorption and photocatalytic activities. The removal adsorptive capacity of ZrO2-500 for red dye 195 was decreased from 37.1 to 2.2 mg/g with increasing dose up to 3 g/L. Meanwhile, red dye was removed with rate constant of 0.132 - 0.324 h-1 under solar simulator. Finally, zirconia was successively prepared from low cost materials with lower energy and materials consumption.