analysing the effect of quinalphos pesticide on fish health through molecular docking studies and their eradication by photocatalytic degradation using fe/s/tio2 nanocomposite

Because of growing environmental issues, there is a requirement for the immediate degradation of pesticides and their residues from local and commercial streamlets. quinalphos is one of the most common organophosphorous pesticides especially used in agricultural fields brings about a great impact on the environment, thereby affecting the health of aquatic organisms and humans. among the various types of methods that have been implemented, photocatalytic reaction is considered the most relevant technique for the removal of toxic organic contaminants. in this study, modified tio2 has been synthesized by doping with fe, s (fe/s/tio2) using a simple one-step sol-gel method. different spectroscopic methods, including x-ray diffraction (xrd), sem with edax, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (drs), transmission electron microscopy (tem), and fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ft-ir), were used to assess the structural, morphological, and optical characters of the synthesized catalyst. the incorporation of fe3+ and the distribution of s nonmetal in the tio2 crystal lattice were affirmed by the xrd, sem, and ft-ir analysis. the band gap energy of the fe/s/tio2 nanocomposite has been narrowed to 2.5ev and its photocatalytic activity has been extended to the visible region. the photocatalytic performance of fe/s/tio2 was studied through the photodegradation of quinalphos. the photocatalytic activity of the respective nanocomposites on the degradation of quinalphos has been confirmed by uv-visible spectroscopy. thus, fe/s/tio2 photocatalyst was employed for the degradation of quinalphos and complete mineralization was achieved in 12 minutes of visible light irradiation, and it was analyzed by toc analysis. the determination of reaction intermediates has also been carried out. the reaction rate followed pseudo - first-order kinetics. furthermore, the reusable feature of the catalyst was demonstrated to be used for twelve cycles. the penetration of pesticide residues into protein pockets of fishes was predicted by molecular docking. furthermore, the reduction in toxicity level of the effluent was examined using aquatic organisms. thus, fe/s/tio2 nanocomposite is an efficient photocatalyst to oxidize emerging organic contaminants due to its high synergetic effect of visible light absorbing tendency and low recombination effect of charge carriers.