In the photocatalytic studies, FT sheet was placed in a Petri
dish (4 in. diameter) containing 60 mL of 2.5
×10−5M IC dye. The
solution was then stirred for 15 min in the dark to allow theadsorption equilibrium in a closed compartment
(0.9 m
×
0.9 m
×
0.9 m) to avoid interference from ambient light
after which the irradiation was initiated by switching on the UV
light (fluorescent blacklight, 20 W, F20T12-BLB, GE, USA) and
magnetically stirred. At a given time interval (every 1 h), 3 mL of
dye solution was collected for analysis. The concentrations of IC
dye were analyzed using a UV–vis spectrophotometer (Specord
S100, Analytik Jena, Germany) from the changes in absorbance
at 610 nm against the calibration graph constructed from several
standard solutions of IC at various concentrations. The percentage
of degradation was calculated by Eq. (1):s