A comparative study on the degradation of methyl orange, methylene blue and congo red by atmospheric pressure jet

One of the most serious problems faced by billions of people today is the availability of fresh water. According to statistics, 15% of the world's total output of dye products is discharged into the environment as dye wastewater, which seriously pollutes groundwater resources. For the treatment of chemically and biologically contaminated water the advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) shows the promising action. The main advantage with AOPs is the ability to degrade the organic pollutants to $CO_2$ and $H_2O$. For this degradation process the AOPs generation of powerful and non-selective radicals that may oxidize majority of the organic pollutants present in the water body. To generate the various reactive chemical species such as radicals (${\bullet}OH$, ${\bullet}H$, ${\bullet}O$, ${\bullet}HO_2$) and molecular species ($H_2O_2$, $H_2$, $O_2$) in large amount in water, we have used the atmospheric pressure plasma. Among the reactive and non-reactive species, the hydroxyl radical (${\bullet}OH$) plays important role due to its higher oxidation potential (E0: 2.8 V). Therefore, in this work we have checked the degradation of various dyes such as methyl orange, methylene blue and congo red using different type of atmospheric pressure plasma sources (Indirect jet and direct jet). To check the degradation we have used the UV-visible spectroscopy, HPLC and LC-MS spectroscopy. Further, to estimate role of ${\bullet}OH$ on the degradation of dyes we have studied the molecular dynamic simulation.