A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON PHOTO DEGRADATION OF METHYLENE BLUE DYE EFFLUENT BY ADVANCED OXIDATION PROCESS BY USING TiO 2 /ZnO PHOTO CATALYST

ABSTRACT The effluent from the textile, paper, and food industries containing dye is strongly colored & reveals very harmful effects on living things. In order to reduce water pollution, the degradation of dye into non-toxic form is desirable. The photo catalytic degradation of methylene blue is reported in the present paper. The irradiation of aqueous solution of methylene blue (MB) dye in presence of photo catalyst & UV light were carried out in the batch photo reactor. Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) & zinc oxide (ZnO) were used as photo catalyst for the study. The rate decolorisation was estimated from residual concentration spectrophotometrically. Effects of some operating parameters such as the initial P H , H 2 O 2 /COD ratio, & the amounts of catalyst on the degradation of the dyes were investigated. Results show that ZnO is a better alternative photo catalyst compared to TiO 2 in terms of percentage degradation of MB. The maximum decolorizing efficiency was occurred in less than 90min with 50mg/750ml of ZnO catalyst dose