Biosynthesis of ZnO nanoparticles using the young fruit of Borassus flabellifer: Characterization and photocatalytic removal of biohazardous safranin-O dye using solar irradiation

Abstract

Here, ZnO nanostructures were synthesized for the first time from the young fruit of the Borassus flabellifer. X-ray diffraction study revealed that the unit cell of ZnO was hexagonal with particle size 39.83 nm. The field-emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) images showed that spherical nanoparticles were formed. A sharp absorption peak was seen at 375 nm in the UV-vis absorption study, and the calculated excitonic band gap was 3.37 eV. The biosynthesized ZnO was used as a photocatalyst to remove the biohazardous safranin-O (SO) dye using solar irradiation. Freundlich isotherm model was used to study the adsorption behavior of SO onto ZnO. At optimum conditions, nearly 96.89% of the dye was degraded in just 80 minutes. Furthermore, the impact of catalyst dose, initial dye concentration, solution pH, and temperature on photodegradation was also investigated.