PHOTOCATALYTIC DEGRADATION OF TETRACYCLINE IN AQUEOUS SOLUTION USING METAL OXIDES

Abstract

This study primarily focuses on the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline using the metal oxide nano-photocatalyst ZnO, CeO2 and CuO in different concentration dosage synthesized by the sol-gel method. The photocatalytic degradation of these calcined samples was performed to estimate their degradation efficiency. The catalyst was characterized by different analytical methods including Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller specific surface area (BET), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. XRD and SEM results helped in identifying the phase transformation which had been observed for the photocatalysts. The effect of parameters such as molar ratio of metal oxide catalysts, concentration, catalyst type, catalyst dosage, binary and ternary photocatalyst mixtures and time factor on the rate of tetracycline degradation and correlate them with the efficiency of tetracycline degradation was studied. Taking the initial tetracycline concentration of 30 mg/L, the optimum conditions were pH 8.1, reaction temperature 30 °C and reaction time 6 h corresponding to the maximum degradation efficiency of 79.95%. Further, kinetic study was also performed to estimate the photodegradation of tetracycline in aqueous medium.