RESUMO
Carbon materials are readily available and are essential in energy storage. One of the routes used to enhance their surface area and activity is the decoration of carbons with semiconductors, such as amorphous TiO2, for application in energy storage devices.
RESUMO
Antibiotics, such as oxolinic acid (OXA), in aquaculture effluents contribute to the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance, which makes it urgent to develop efficient and sustainable processes for their removal. Aiming a photocatalytic degradation under solar radiation, different carbon quantum dots (CQDs) were produced in this work through a bottom-up hydrothermal methodology and incorporated into TiO2 by a simple calcination method. A total of thirteen materials were synthesized and tested for OXA photocatalytic removal from synthetic and real matrices. Among them, CQDs produced with citric acid and incorporated into TiO2 at 4% (w/w) (TiO2/CQDs-CA 4% (w/w)) were the most efficient photocatalysts, providing an OXA half-life time (t1/2) decrease of 91%, 79% and 85% in phosphate buffer solution (PBS), synthetic sea salts (SSS) and brackish aquaculture effluent (BAE), respectively. Therefore, the herein synthesized TiO2/CQDs-CA 4% (w/w) composites have shown to be promising materials for a sustainable solar-driven removal of antibiotics from aquaculture effluents.
