Effect of different solvents in synthesis of Fe₃O₄/zeolite-NaY composite catalysts for the Fenton catalytic degradation of methylene blue

Methylene blue (MB) is one of the synthetic dyes found in textile industry waste. Several methods ever used to overcome MB problems such as adsorption, filtration, and precipitation can only change MB from one phase to another, causing secondary pollutants. In this research, a Fenton-like composite catalyst, one of the advanced oxidation process (AOP) methods has been synthesized to solve MB waste. The composite catalyst was synthesized by combining zeolite-NaY in Fe3O4 precursor by coprecipitation method in two different solvents (H2O and HCl). The composite catalyst was characterized by XRD, FTIR, and SEM. The combination of Fe3O4 and zeolite-NaY can be seen from the X-Ray diffraction. FTIR analysis proved the success of the synthesis by showing the presence of new vibration at 581 cm-1 indicating the Fe-O bond in the composite catalyst. The performance of the composite catalyst was then tested by degrading 100 mL MB 10 ppm through the Fenton reaction with the addition of hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizing agent. The results showed that more than 90% of MB could be degraded within 10 minutes using the synthesized composite catalyst with HCl solvent (FeZ-A). The lower degradation percentage was shown by the catalyst synthesized with water solvent (FeZ), which was 45%.