A new green catalyst and antimicrobial agent derived from eco-friendly products of camel bones: synthesis and physicochemical characterization

The circular economy, which aims to produce sustainable materials from waste, plays an important role in environmental research. This work’s primary goal is to reuse food waste to synthesize usable materials. We describe here a sustainable, green, easy, fast, and cheap method for recycling waste camel bone as a renewable material for effective applications. The recycled camel bone (RCB) material has been characterized using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR, ultraviolet–visible absorption spectra (UV–Vis), energy band gap, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)), and Raman spectroscopy were used to analyze the produced material. Particle sizes in the range of 100–120 nm were seen in SEM images. RCB has been utilized as a robust heterogeneous catalyst to promote Knoevenagel condensation reactions in an aqueous medium. The applied sustainable conditions promoted the reactions to afford superior yields (≈98%) after 8 min for all derivatives with six cycles without remarkable alterations in activity. The antimicrobial activity of camel bones, extracted organic species, and extracted hydroxyapatite was assessed against pathogenic microbes: Bacillus cereus, Enterococcus faecium, Escherichia coli, and Candida albicans. Hydroxyapatite showed the best antimicrobial activity against the studied microbial strains.