Bacterial cellulose as support for biopolymer stabilized catalytic cobalt nanoparticles.

In heterogeneous catalysis, ease of separation of the catalyst is considered to be important for its effective re-use. In this paper, we report a synthesis of carboxymethyl cellulose stabilized cobalt nanoparticles (CMC-Co) catalyst and their coating on the bacterial cellulose nanofibers (BCN) as high surface area support to prepare the CMC-Co-BCN dip-catalyst strips. The samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy for surface morphology, X-ray diffraction spectrometry for crystal structure and thermogravimetric analysis for the thermal behavior and estimation of the Co content in the CMC-Co-BCN. The CMC-Co-BCN samples were used as dip-catalysts for the 2,6-dinitrophenol and methylene blue dye reduction reactions by sodium borohydride. The catalytic results of CMC-Co-BCN dip-catalyst were compared with the CMC-Co suspension. Both the pollutants were reduced at faster reaction rates by CMC-Co as compared to the CMC-Co-BCN but the latter had advantage of easy recovery for repeated use. The effects of catalyst amount, combination of the two pollutants in a solution, and repeatability tests were also performed and results were discussed.