Yttrium oxide-doped ZnO for effective adsorption of basic fuchsin dye: equilibrium, kinetics, and mechanism studies

The ability of yttrium oxide-doped zinc oxide nanoparticles (YZnO) to eliminate Basic Fuchsin dye (BF) from wastewater was investigated. YZnO was obtained by a mechanical ball milling approach. The X-ray diffraction pattern revealed a wurtzite ZnO structure with the appearance of the Y2O3 phase and a crystallite size reduction from 20 to 16 nm. The morphology of the fabricated nanoparticles exhibited increasingly agglomerated particles. The specific surface area increases with doping from 10.13 to 20.62 m(2) g(-1), leading to enhance the adsorption capacity of the Yttrium-doped ZnO as opposed to pure ones. The initial BF concentration and pH influenced the removal efficiency resulting in 75.53 mg/g of YZnO adsorption capacity at pH = 11 and 180 min of equilibrium time. These results register that YZnO is an effective sorbent for the elimination of BF from wastewater. The pseudo-second-order model ideally suited the kinetic data, and the adsorption equilibrium was established to conform with the Freundlich isotherm. The BF adsorption mechanism is associated with the electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bond, as indicated by the pH, the coexisting ions, and the FTIR studies.