In the advanced oxidation process, photocatalytic degradation stands out as one of the most eco-friendly methods for treating wastewater. Recently, transition metal oxides and rare earth metal oxides supported heterogeneous nanomaterials have emerged as promising photocatalysts for the next generation. This study focuses on the efficient photocatalytic degradation of the moxifloxacin (MX) antibiotic using a lanthanide-infused WO 3 -based gC 3 N 4 nanomaterial (LWCN). The synthesized photocatalyst exhibited enhanced light absorption and high chemical stability, leading to a significant reduction in moxifloxacin in wastewater. The photocatalytic performance of the LWCN was examined by assessing the degradation of MX under different light exposure conditions. Experiments were conducted across varying initial concentrations of MX, revealing that degradation efficiency decreased with increasing antibiotic concentration. The obtained results show that the degradation percentage of the MX antibiotic (5 ppm) was exceptionally high, reaching 99.87% under sunlight (180 min) and 99.8% under visible light (240 min). Kinetic studies confirmed pseudo-first-order kinetics with rate constants (5 ppm − 8.27 × 10 − 2 min − 1 ), indicating that degradation rates decreased as antibiotic concentration increased. The LWCN nanomaterial demonstrates significant potential for effectively eliminating MX from aqueous environments, highlighting its applicability in wastewater treatment under natural sunlight and visible light conditions.
Kumar et al. (Tue,) studied this question.