Photocatalytic Degradation of Levofloxacin by Cu doped TiO2 under Visible LED Light

Abstract

Degradation performance of Cu-TiO2 photocatalytic materials against a widely used antibiotic drug levofloxacin (LFX) was investigated under visible LED light source of 40 W. Cu-TiO2 (0.25-1.0 wt%) nanomaterials are prepared through reverse micelle mediated modified sol-gel method. Characterization of synthesized Cu-TiO2 samples are performed by XRD, UV-Vis, and DLS techniques. The doping of 0.5 wt% copper in TiO2 shown lower crystallite size (5.79 nm) and visible light absorption characteristics with energy band gap of 2.84 eV. 0.5 wt% Cu-TiO2 photocatalyst has shown significant LFX degradation of 75.5% with catalyst loading of 1 g/L and initial pollutant concentration of 50 mg/L.