Clusters of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles capped with palm shell extract and modified with chitosan: Catalytic applications for degradation of cationic and anionic dyes and their binary mixtures

Heterogeneous regenerative iron oxide nanocatalyst capped with palm shell extract(IO) and IO modified with chitosan has been developed by simple coprecipitation of ferrous and ferric salts for degradation of single and binary mixture of dyes in aqueous phase. The iron oxide nanoparticles were characterized using IR, UV, TEM, XRD, Raman, VSM and Mossbauer techniques. The obtained results suggest the presence of Fe3O4, gamma-Fe2O3 and alpha-Fe2O3 in IO and CIO though to different extents. The degradation process was carried out at room temperature and at near neutral pH which led to complete degradation and multicyclic use of the nanocatalyst for environmental applications without loss in efficiency. CIO was observed to be more efficient as compared to IO during catalytic degradation of binary mixture of dyes.