Visible light photocatalytic degradation of oxytetracycline hydrochloride using chitosan-loaded Z-scheme heterostructured material BiOCOOH/O-gCN.

In this work, a Z-scheme heterostructured BiOCOOH/O-gCN material was synthesized and immobilized on chitosan (CTS) to obtain the BiOCOOH/O-gCN/CTS photocatalytic material for photocatalytic degradation of oxytetracycline hydrochloride (CTC).Our findings indicate that the composite material BiOCOOH/O-gCN, as well as the BiOCOOH/O-gCN/CTS composite membrane, displayed a significantly higher efficiency in photocatalytic degradation of CTC compared to BiOCOOH alone, owing to the synergistic effect of adsorption and photocatalysis. Following four cycles of use, the composite material retained around 96 % of its initial photocatalytic degradation activity. The addition of CTS in the photocatalytic material resolved issues such as aggregation and difficult recovery commonly encountered with powder materials, thereby facilitating effective collision between the photocatalytic active sites and CTC. Experimental and theoretical calculations provided confirmation that the combination of BiOCOOH and O-gCN effectively enhanced the light absorption capacity and photocatalytic performance. Furthermore, we investigated the influence of environmental factors such as pH value and anions on the photocatalytic degradation experiment, which offers valuable insights for the application of composite catalysts in wastewater treatment.