REMOVAL OF SAFRANIN FROM THE
ENVIRONMENT BY USING GRAPHENE OXIDE PAPER
Question: Can Graphene Oxide be used to remove dyes
from the environment?
Introduction: Water pollution is threatening all living
organisms in the world. The main source of this problem
is the indifference of companies which have factories.
Because they need to use dyes for coloring, they are
polluting rivers, oceans and lakes. They dump dyes from
factories into water sources because they don’t know
how to remove them in a satisfactory way.
(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/
freshwater/pollution/)
One of the most dangerous dyes is safranin. Safranin
is a red dye matter, and its formula is C20H19N4Cl
(Fig. 1). Safranin is used in textile, cosmetic and paper
industries. It affects the structure of bacteria, so it may
affect beneficial bacteria, too. Thus, it causes problems
for the environment. (Preethi, Sivanesan, Sivasamy,
& Swaminathan, 2006 ; Rotte, Yerramala, Boniface, &
Srikanth, 2014)
Graphene is one atom thick carbon material, which
is used in advanced technologies such as membrane,
sensor, battery and electronics. Graphene is prevalently
produced from graphite by its oxidation (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. a) Graphene, b) Graphite, c) Graphene oxide
(www.emaze.com/@ACCCFZLC/Graphene-Presntation,
www.graphene-info.com/graphene-oxide )
Data:
SEM: SEM image of the prepared graphene oxide paper
is presented in Fig. 7. Graphene oxide paper has a
wrinkled surface (Fig. 7a). Additionally, it is seen in Fig.
7.b that the paper formed layer by layer assembly after
vacuum filtration process.
CHEMISTRY
DEPARTMENT
Fig. 1. Chemical formula and aqueous solution of safranin
Fig. 3. Top-view (a) and cross-sectional (b) SEM images
of graphene oxide paper (Alanyalioglu & Dagci, 2016)
THE CLAPPER 2016 - 2017 51