Agar Assisted Synthesis of Copper Oxide For Photocatalytic Oxidation of Tetracycline in Wastewater

Tetracycline (tc) in the wastewater can cause allergies and toxicity# in this paper copper oxide was synthesized with the aid of agar and was tested in photocatalytic degradation of tc under visible light# with increasing agar/cu ratio, the ability of copper oxide for adsorption of tc increased, however the photocatalytic degradation percent of tc decreased# the characterization of synthesized photocatalysts by xrd and ftir showed that the sample without agar was in the form of cu2o, however after introduction of agar, some part of cu2o was converted to cu0# with increasing agar/cu ratio the crystallinity of cu0 increased and size of cu0 crystallites decreased from 22 nm to 18 nm# ftir showed that there was a strong o-h related peak in the most active photocatalyst that confirmed the affinity of this sample for production of hydroxyl radicals# evaluation of tc photodegradation at different tc concentrations indicated that with increasing tc concentration from 20 to 40 ppm, the photodegradation percent of tc declined from 58 to 47%#