Characterization of CoCr2O4 semiconductor: A prominent photocatalyst in the degradation of basic blue 41 from wastewater

The hazards of dyes on the water have driven researchers to develop strategies to remove them. Our choice for this study was photocatalysis. In view of this, semiconductor CoCr2O4 (CCO) by the co-precipitation method was synthesized and explored for its photo-catalytic efficiency by the possible elimination of basic blue 41 (BB41) by degradation in the visible light irradiation. The phase of synthesized CCO was refined and characterized structurally using X-ray diffraction (XRD) associated with the Rietveld method to illustrate the structural form of this spinel. The characteristic bands of CCO were identified for the vibrational groups using the FT-IR spectrum. Using the diffused reflectance data, an optical gap band of 1.65 eV was determined. The energy diagram resulting after the electrochemical study confirmed that the catalyst adopts the nature of n-type semiconductors. The photocatalytic degradation of BB41 by CCO as a function of time of irradiation, pH of BB41 solution, CCO dose and initial BB41 concentration was determined. The degradation percentage of 99% was studied for. 300 min but the efficiency decreased as the initial dye concentration was decreased. The photo-degradation mechanism and the compliance of pseudo-first-order models are discussed in this contribution.