Thermally curled g-CN fibers for the simultaneous removal of Rhodamine B, Methylene blue, and Methyl orange from the ternary dye mixture.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) nanotubes are considered to be one of the most promising advanced materials with a plethora of environmental applications due to their unique structure. In this study, a simple water-induced morphology transformation method was adopted to synthesize thermally curled graphitic carbon nitride (t-GCN) sheets. The synthesized sample was characterized by XRD, SEM, FTIR, and BET analysis. The photocatalytic application of the t-GCN was studied by the degradation of a ternary dye mixture consisting of 5 ppm solutions of Rhodamine B (RB), Methylene blue (MB), and Methyl orange (MO). The degradation shows that all three dyes were successfully degraded within 90 min with the apparent reaction rate constants of 0.02184 min−1, 0.02975 min−1, and 0.04236 min−1, respectively, for MO, RB, and MB. The degradation rate constants were ∼1.2 times greater than the g-CN counterpart. The tubular structure of the t-GCN provided better charge separation and special charge migration resulting in enhanced photocatalytic degradation as compared to the g-CN sheets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]