Preparation, characterization and potential use of flower shaped Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZON) for the adsorption of Victoria Blue B dye from aqueous solution

•Flower shaped Zinc oxide nanoparticle (ZON) was synthesised by hydrothermal method.•Removal of Victoria Blue B dye ZON nanoparticles was investigated by batch mode experiments.•The maximum adsorption capacity of ZON for Victoria Blue B dye was up to 163 mg/g.

In present work, the performance and effectiveness of flower-shaped Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZON) synthesised by hydrothermal method was evaluated for the adsorption of Victoria Blue B (VB B) dye from aqueous solution. ZON were characterised by using XRD, FTIR, SEM, EDX and DLS. Batch mode adsorption experiments were carried out to optimise the process conditions viz., pH, adsorbent dose, dye concentration, temperature, etc. The adsorption of cationic dye onto ZON surface was illustrated by Langmuir and Temkin isotherm models. The mechanism of dye adsorption onto the nanoparticles was explained by pseudo-second order kinetic model (R2 ⩾ 0.997). The thermodynamic parameters including Gibb’s free energy (ΔG0), enthalpy (ΔH0), and entropy (ΔS0) were studied at different temperatures (10–70 °C). The maximum adsorption capacity of VB B dye onto ZON was achieved up to 163 mg/g at pH 6.0 and temperature 27 ± 1 °C.

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