Adsorption of Malachite Green Dye in Aqueous Solution Using Low-Cost Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Urea Formaldehyde Nanocomposite as Adsorbent

In recent decades, the world’s fast industrialization has made water contamination the most serious problem in the world. Organic dyes, especially malachite green, are synthetic dyes used in the textile industries to dye silk, cotton, leather, wool, paper, etc. and consequently discharged into the water resources that pollute aquatic environments. The purpose of the research work is to study the efficiency of zinc oxide urea formaldehyde nanocomposite used as an adsorbent in the removal of malachite green dye from polluted wastewater. The main stages of this work include the synthesis of zinc oxide by the simple sol-gel method at room temperature. The synthesised nanoparticle was coated with urea formaldehyde to increase its efficiency. The characterization techniques such as XRD, FTIR, SEM, and BET of the synthesised nanomaterials show that the zinc oxide urea formaldehyde nanocomposite was successfully synthesised. The batch adsorption study of the dye onto the ZnO-UF nanocomposite was investigated with a UV-visible spectrophotometer. The application of this synthesised nanocomposites as an adsorbent successfully adsorbed more than 97% malachite green dye at a reducing dye strength of 40 PPM, doses of 0.35 g, and pH 8 within a 90-min equilibration time.