Antibiotics, such as oxolinic acid (OXA), in aquaculture effluents contribute to the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance, which makes it urgent to develop efficient and sustainable processes for their removal. Aiming a photocatalytic degradation under solar radiation, different carbon quantum dots (CQDs) were produced in this work through a bottom-up hydrothermal methodology and incorporated into TiO2 by a simple calcination method. A total of thirteen materials were synthesized and tested for OXA photocatalytic removal from synthetic and real matrices. Among them, CQDs produced with citric acid and incorporated into TiO2 at 4% (w/w) (TiO2/CQDs-CA 4% (w/w)) were the most efficient photocatalysts, providing an OXA half-life time (t1/2) decrease of 91%, 79% and 85% in phosphate buffer solution (PBS), synthetic sea salts (SSS) and brackish aquaculture effluent (BAE), respectively. Therefore, the herein synthesized TiO2/CQDs-CA 4% (w/w) composites have shown to be promising materials for a sustainable solar-driven removal of antibiotics from aquaculture effluents.
Keywords: Antibiotics; Antimicrobial resistance; Brackish aquaculture effluent; Visible-light photocatalysis.
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