Abstract:
Water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) is a free floating aquatic weed that potentially damages
the aquatic ecosystem by colonizing rapidly and it causes drying of water bodies. In addition,
releasing of colored textile wastewater into nearby water bodies potentially damage the aquatic
creatures and surrounding lives. But behind the negative assumptions of Water hyacinth (WH)
weed, it is rich in natural fiber content, namely cellulose and its leaves used as a reducing and
capping agent during nanoparticles (NPs) synthesis. Therefore; this research mainly focus on
utilization of the weed’s stem and leaves to develop cellulose nano crystals (CNCs) and as
capping and reducing agent during silver doped zinc oxide nanoparticles (Ag@ZnO NPs)
synthesis, respectively. Furthermore; the developed CNCs to behave as a photocatalyst, it was
combined with a green synthesized Ag@ZnO NPs to develop a bionanocomposite (BNC). The
characterization techniques i.e. UV-Vis spectrophotometer, FTIR, XRD, TGA, BET, DLS and
SEM-EDX were confirm the obtained CNCs and Ag@ZnO NPs were effectively synthesized. Also
each characterization results exhibit the formation of pure BNCs (i.e. CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:1),
CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5) and CNC/Ag@ZnO (0.5:1)). The synthetic Methylene Blue (MB) dye
solution and real textile wastewater were used in photodegradation study. Moreover, the effect
of operating parameters i.e. pH, BNCs dosage, initial MB concentration, and irradiation time
was investigated under sunlight irradiation. According to the results, CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5)
BNC has higher photodegradation efficiency (98.8%) than CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:1) and
CNC/Ag@ZnO (0.5:1) BNCs at the optimum condition. In addition, the RSM-BBD analysis
results showed that pH = 10, CNCs/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5) BNC dosage =18.075 mg/L, MB dye
concentration = 17.468 mg/L and Irradiation time = 111.855 min were the optimal level of the
studied process parameters using CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5) BNC. Also, the desirability of the
process was 1.00; it confirms the acceptance and applicability of the model. Moreover, the
recyclability test confirms CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5) BNC has high recyclability efficiency even
after 7th round than the left synthesized BNCs. Therefore; the facile synthesis and high
degradation efficiency of CNC/Ag@ZnO (1:0.5) BNC photocatalyst make it a promising
candidate for real-world dye containing textile wastewater treatment under light irradiation with
low operating cost.
