Effective photocatalytic degradation of amoxicillin using MIL-53(Al)ZnO composite.
A promising hierarchical nanocomposite of MIL-53(Al)ZnO was synthesized as a visible-light-driven photocatalyst to investigate the degradation of amoxicillin (AMX). MIL-53(Al)ZnO ultrafine nanoparticles were obtained by preparing Zn-free MIL-53Al and employing it as a reactive template under hydrothermal and chemical conditions. The synthesized nanocomposite (MIL-53(Al)ZnO) has a low content of Al > 1.5% with significantly different characterizations of the parent compounds elucidated by various analyses such as SEM, TEM, XRD, EDX, and UV-Vis. The effect of operational parameters (catalyst dose (0.2-1.0 gL), solution pH (3-11), and initial AMX concentration (10-90 mgL)) on the AMX removal efficiency was studied and optimized by the response surface methodology. A reasonable goodness-of-fit between the expected and experimental values was confirmed with correlation coefficient (R