Investigation the Synergistic Effect of Adsorption and Photocatalysis for Removal of Dye Pollutants by Hydrogel Supported In2S3 Nanoparticles

Homogenous catalysis which the catalyst operates in the same phase as the reactants is definitely efficient in catalysis processes while it suffers from the impossibility or inconvenience of the removal of the catalyst from the reaction media. In this research, In2S3 nanoparticles were synthesized by a simple precipitation method and then immobilized and stabilized in the porous structure as a substrate. The properties of pure hydrogel and In2S3 in hydrogel were characterized by FTIR, DRS, XRD, BET, BJH, FESEM, and EDX. The DRS results confirmed that the stabilization of nanoparticles in hydrogel led to redshift of bandgap. The hydrogel with In2S3 showed a more porous structure in comparison with pure hydrogel. Because of the decrease of bandgap and increase of specific surface area, In2S3 nanoparticles stabilized in hydrogel removed Rhodamine B (RhB) as a model pollutant very well. The performance of catalyst in the removal of RhB under dark condition (adsorption) and visible light irradiation (photocatalysis) was investigated and 77.7% and 95.2% of dye removal percentage were obtained in 120 min under dark and light irradiation, respectively. In conclusion, immobilization In2S3 as a high-efficiency visible light photocatalyst in hydrogel provided promising heterogeneous and reusable catalyst for water treatment