Photocatalytic activity study of TiO2/ZrO2/SnO2 nanocomposite in photodegradation of tetracycline

In the present work, the ternary nanocomposite TiO2 /ZrO2 /SnO2 was prepared by sol-gel method. Sol –gel technology finds applications in the development of new materials for photocatalyst. The photocatalytic elimination of tetracycline was used as model reaction to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of thenanocomposite catalyst under ultraviolet light irradiation. The results indicated that the TiO2 /ZrO2 /SnO2 composite materials have an apparent visible light absorption, combining TiO2 with SnO2 and ZrO2 could promote the TiO2 phase transition from anatase to rutile. The effect of several parameters such as pH, time, amount of photocatalyst and tetracycline concentration as pollutant are studied. The results showed the maximum degradation percent of 72.46 was obtained at pH = 3, time 4 h and 0.02 g of photocatalyst

Keywords:

Photocatalyst , degradation , tetracycline , nanocomposite