An innovative eco-friendly organic semiconductor-biochar photocatalytic adsorbent for efficient and stable removal mechanism of oxytetracycline hydrochloride under light illumination

Abstract

With the rapid development of medicine, the use of antibiotics is growing, thus brings a series of pollution problems. To address one of the most heavily used tetracyclic antibiotics, oxytetracycline hydrochloride (OTC), we successfully loaded advanced organic photoelectric material J71:Y6 on the coconut shell carbon (CSC) substrate with high specific surface area, and successfully prepared an innovative, high-efficient, eco-friendly and stable catalyst, CSC:J71:Y6. This catalyst not only demonstrates excellent catalytic efficiency, which can completely degrade oxytetracycline hydrochloride in just 50 min, but also ensures that there is no secondary pollution in the treatment process. The stability of CSC:J71:Y6′s performance after 30 experimental cycles, maintaining a high 88.6% removal efficiency, is particularly noteworthy. We explore the principle of its high efficiency through several characterization experiments and also give possible pathways for degrading OTC. This research integrates the two frontier fields of organic photoelectric materials and photocatalysis, which not only effectively overcomes the problems of low efficiency, poor stability and secondary pollution faced by traditional catalysts, but also opens up a new green road for the environmental protection industry, especially in the field of wastewater treatment.