PdCu nanoparticles stabilized on porous CeO2 for catalytic degradation of azo dyes: structural characterization and kinetic studies

In this work, a series of porous CeO2 stabilized PdCu nanoparticles are synthesized by a modified hydrothermal method and applied for catalytic reductive degradation of azo dyes. For the synthesis of CeO2 support a simple precipitation method is adopted using ammonium oxalate as precipitant. Synthesized support and nanoparticles are characterized by XRD, TGA, BET surface area, SEM/EDX, TEM, Raman, UV-visible DRS, FTIR and XPS analyses. Catalytic studies show that the synthesized nanoparticles can efficiently reduce model azo dyes, methyl orange (MO) and congo red (CR) with good recyclability. Among various PdCu compositions, Pd1Cu9/CeO2 exhibits superior catalytic activity towards reductive degradation of MO and CR at room temperature. Thus, PdCu/CeO2 nanoparticles can be accepted as potential component for the application in wastewater treatment