Synthesis of mesoporous TiO2-MCM-41 photocatalyst for quinolone antibiotics removal from aqueous solution

In this paper, a significant aspect of using TiO2 photocatalyst immobilized on MCM-41 mesoporous material by sol-gel method for ciprofloxacin (CIP) and norfloxacin (NOR) antibiotics removals was studied. The structure and morphology of the materials were evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer analysis combined with field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM-EDX), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopes (TEM), and N-2 adsorption-desorption isotherms (BET) methods. Characterization results indicated that the presence of TiO2 anatase phase with relatively high TiO2 content (up to 60 % by weight) did not destroy the mesopore system of MCM-41 substrate. Photoactivity of the catalyst was tested through the degradation of two quinolone antibiotics, CIP, and NOR. In this study, the factors affecting the decomposition efficiency of the above pharmaceutical antibiotics such as, the immobilized content of TiO2 and the concentrations of antibiotics as and catalyst were also evaluated using Langmuir-Hinshelwood (LH) model. The TiO2 immobilized on MCM-41 material showed a better ability to remove CIP and NOR antibiotics than the commercial TiO2 nanoparticles (P25) due to the high dispersion of active sites on an MCM-41 high specific surface area mesoporous substrate.