Synthesis and Kinetics of Photocatalysis Mechanism of (La₀.₂₅Gd₀.₂₅Ca₀.₂₅Sr₀.₂₅)MnO₃ for Wastewater Treatment

With the drastic rise in population over the past decades the growth of textile industries also increased, and it caused tremendous accumulation of organic dyes over water which is one of the important causes of water pollution. Dyes are non-biodegradable and toxic hazardous water pollutants. To reduce the bad effect of the industrial dye, scientists are putting a lot of effort into it. Photocatalysis is considered as the appropriate and credible method for the degradation of dyes from wastewater, with current research focusing on environmental improvement into sustainable material development. For the first time synthesis of (La₀.₂₅Gd₀.₂₅Ca₀.₂₅Sr₀.₂₅)MnO3 was done by the solid state method. The novel high entropy oxide is an effective and cheap solution for industrial wastewater treatment. The optical and structural characterization of the synthesized material was done using different techniques such as XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis spectroscopy and tauc plot analyses. All these techniques confirmed the excellent synthesis of material, functional groups, good visible light absorbance and band gap of 1.31 eV. The crystalline nature and crystallite size (22.4 nm) was also determined using XRD. Photocatalytic studies showed that the methylene blue dye removal efficiency of the photocatalyst is 98.9% under 125 minutes. Certain important kinetic parameters including, rate constant (k=0.37 min-1) and reaction order (n=2.6) of photodegradation process are evaluated and discussed. The commercialization potential of the prepared photocatalyst is also pointed out.