A novel ultrasonic assisted-reverse micelle procedure to synthesize Eu-MOF nanostructure with high sono/sonophotocatalytic activity: a systematic study for brilliant green dye removal

In recent years, one of the growing environmental concerns has been contamination of water sources by dyes. For solving this problem, different nanostructures with various potential have been suggested. Among these nanostructures, Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs), novel porous crystalline nanostructures with unique physiochemical properties, have drawn great attention for removal of dyes from different solutions. In this work, a new nanostructure of Eu-MOF was synthesized through facial, fast, and cost-effective ultrasound assisted reverse micelle (UARM) method. This nanostructure was developed for sonocatalytic and sonophotocatalytic degradation of brilliant green dye (BG) from aqueous solution. Further, 2 k⁻¹ factorial design was used for investigating the effect of various experimental parameters including catalyst dosage, contact time, initial dye concentration, ultrasonic power, and pH on the sonocatalyst and sonophotocatalyst behaviors of Eu-MOF. The results of analysis of variance confirmed that these parameters have a significant effect on the degradation efficiency of brilliant green by Eu-MOF. For achieving the best optimization of the BG degradation, the response surface methodology was applied. According to this methodology, the Eu-MOF has a significant potential for BG degradation as high as 99%.