Degradation of co-axially aligned polypropylene globules usinga novel Fe and Zn oxides decorated mesoporous silica nanocomposite

초록

Polypropylene (PP), due to its highest moisture resistance, light weight,durability, excellent physical properties, ease of manufacturing, and low-cost isconsidered the most important material in the modern plastic industry. Eachyear, a huge amount of waste PP is discarded, which releases micro-sizedplastics into the biosphere, causing serious environmental problems andrecycling of such waste plastics may not be economically viable. Co-axiallyaligned polypropylene (CAPP) is the most hydrophobic among all plastics,hence, it is the most diffi cult to degrade. In this study, Fe oxides and Zn oxidesdecorated mesoporous silica nanocomposite i.e., Fe O -ZnO@SiO (FZS) wassynthesized using sol-gel/combustion method to degrade CAPP globules. It wasdone under visible light source by heterogeneous photo-Fenton process.Characterization of the pristine and treated CAPP globules was done by SEM,ATR-FTIR, and XPS. The eff ects of long-term heterogeneous photo-Fentonreaction on the structural and physicochemical variation of FZS was alsoinvestigated to check its sustainability. The SEM images showed the surfacedegradation of CAPP globules and no structural changes in the FZS. Similarly,FTIR and XPS analysis of the pristine and treated FZS samples showed nosignifi cant changes for the band and peak intensities respectively. However, theATR-FTIR spectra of CAPP globules demonstrated a signifi cant rise in the bandintensity of ?OH and C=O region and XPS revealed the increase in the O-1s anddecrease in the C-1s peak intensity. The BET surface area of FZS increased withtime and the degradation percentage of CAPP also got elevated. This enhancedperformance is attributed to the structural modifi cations of FZS after visible light exposure, where increased surface area, pore volume, and OH groupsdensity resulted in an increased number of the possible pathways responsiblefor the oxidation of CAPP surface. FZS could degrade 35.0% of CAPP globules in3000 h. The fate of the degraded product