Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part A (2020)

A large number of surfactant containing waste water are discharged into the environment, resulting in harming aquatic life, polluting the water and endangering human health. Therefore, it is important to monitor and control emissions of surfactants in environmental water. Photo catalytic degradation of copper (II) mustard thiourea complex has been carried out in the presence of light and observed spectrophotometric ally. The propose of this study was to assess the efficiency of photo degradation of copper (II) mustard thiourea complex with various concentration of complex in non-aqueous and non-polar solvent benzene. The synthesized complex was characterized by IR, NMR, ESR spectroscopy. Reaction rate is chosen as the photo catalytic activity, which has been controlled by several factors such as catalyst dose, initial concentration of complex, light exposure, polarity of solvent etc. Rate of reaction has been increases with increase in initial concentration and further decreases which was observed by decolourization of complex solution. An original experimental work, the photo catalytic degradation of the CMT using ZnO and benzene as non-polar solvent, is comprehensively described as a case study, in order to provide sufficient guidelines to deal with this subject, in a rational and integrated way. The degradation process of copper surfactant was examined by UV-IR spectroscopy. This photo degradation system may be practical for treatment of wastewater containing surfactants.