Highly efficient CaCO3-CaO extracted from tap water distillation for effective adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of malachite green dye

Abstract The present work demonstrated the extraction, characterization, adsorption and photocatalytic properties of hardness causing minerals obtained from tap water distillation. The resulting white powder material is sintered at different temperature. XRD and EDS analysis revealed that powder residue consists of mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) having surface area 35.4 m2g−1 that decomposed to CaO after sintering at 900°C for 4h. This CaCO3 powder displayed effective adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of malachite green dye under sunlight relative to the commercial sample. The impact of different parameters like concentration of dye, amount of catalyst on adsorption and photodegradation was studied in details. The adsorption behavior follows the Freundlich adsorption isotherm and photodegradation process exhibited a higher rate constant of k = 5.1 x 10−2 min−1. Therefore, the use of this material could be a greener approach for effective removal and degradation of toxic effluent in wastewater for large-scale industrial applications.