Synthesis and characterization of ternary chitosan-TiO2-ZnO over graphene for photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline from pharmaceutical wastewater

Hossein Asadzadeh Patehkhor; Moslem Fattahi; Mohammadreza Khosravi-Nikou

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-03492-5

Synthesis and characterization of ternary chitosan-TiO₂-ZnO over graphene for photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline from pharmaceutical wastewater

Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 17;11(1):24177. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03492-5.

Authors

Hossein Asadzadeh Patehkhor¹, Moslem Fattahi², Mohammadreza Khosravi-Nikou³

Affiliations

¹ Chemical Engineering Department, Abadan Faculty of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran.
² Chemical Engineering Department, Abadan Faculty of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran. fattahi@put.ac.ir.
³ Department of Gas Engineering, Ahvaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahvaz, Iran.

Abstract

Various nanocomposites of TiO₂-ZnO, TiO₂-ZnO/CS, and TiO₂-ZnO/CS-Gr with different molar ratios were synthesized by sol-gel and ultrasound-assisted methods and utilized under UV irradiation to enhance the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline. Characterization of prepared materials were carried out by XRD, FT-IR, FE-SEM, EDX and BET techniques. The TiO₂-ZnO with the 1:1 molar ratio supported with 1:2 weight ratio CS-Gr (T1‒Z1/CS1‒Gr2 sample) appeared as the most effective material at the optimized operational conditions including the tetracycline concentration of 20 mg/L, pH = 4, catalyst dosage of 0.5 g/L, and 3 h of irradiation time. As expected, the graphene had a significant effect in improving degradation results. The detailed performances of the T1‒Z1/CS1‒Gr2 were compared with ternary nanocomposites from EDX and BET results as well as from the degradation viewpoint. This novel photocatalyst can be effective in actual pharmaceutical wastewater treatment considering the applied operational parameters.