Removal of organic and inorganic effluents from wastewater by using degradation and adsorption properties of transition metal-doped nickel ferrite.

Removal of water pollutants (methylene blue dye and heavy metals) was achieved by zinc/manganese-doped nickel ferrites (Ni1 - xMxFe2O4, where x = 0.00, 0.025, 0.10). Degradation of dye was achieved under natural solar light illumination. Degradation studies of dye were conducted under different parameters such as contact time-80 min, dye's concentration-5 mg/L, pH-7, and dosage of ferrites-15 mg. The adsorption of dye was studied using non-linear kinetics models (pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order) and isotherm models (Langmuir and Freundlich). The adsorption of dye followed pseudo-first-order kinetics (R2 = 0.99377) than second-order kinetics (R2 = 0.98063) and Langmuir isotherm model (R2 = 0.96095) than Freundlich model (R2 = 0.95962) with maximum adsorption efficiency of 29.62 mg/g. Doping of nickel ferrites caused an increase in the removal percentage of methylene blue dye (80 to 90%) and inorganic effluents (75 to 95% for lead and 47 to 82% for cadmium). In addition to this, band gap energy (2.43 to 3.26 eV) (UV-Vis spectroscopy), pore radius (65.2 to 74.8 A°), and specific surface area (16.45 to 27.95 m2/g) (BET analysis) were also increased. Generally, the results of the study revealed that synthesized nanoparticles can act as potential candidate for the removal of effluents from wastewater under optimum parameters along with recyclability, reusability, and separation under the influence of a magnetic field.