Synthesis of waste derived bimetallic (Fe/Ca) Oxy-iodide (WD-BMOX) encapsulated with PVDF based nanosphere (WD-BMOX-P) as solar active agent: An efficient photodegradation of antibiotic

Tetracycline (TC) pharmaceutical compound is the third most used antibiotic after penicillin and quinolones, which developed bacterial resistance against them and environmental toxicity due to partially metabolized within humans and animals. At the same time, waste products (WPs) including food, agriculture, and plastic waste significantly increased day-by-day with the growing population. Therefore, there is a pleading requirement to develop a solar active agent that effectively degrades environmental pollution as well as reduces the burden of WPs. In this context, the present works focus on the development of waste-derived bimetallic (Fe/Ca) Oxy-iodide (WD-BMOX) encapsulated with PVDF-based nanosphere (WD-BMOX-P) as a solar active agent for the degradation of TC antibiotics. The band gap values of the synthesized WD-BMOX-P-based nanosphere are easily altered by changing the ratio of Fe/Ca. The lowest band gap values were observed to be ∼1.95 eV of the WD-BMOX-P-1:2, whereas upon increasing the Ca within the nanosphere band gap value significantly increases. The incorporation of PVDF polymer within the WD-BMOX-P aided advantages to formed nanosphere and improved oxygen vacancy, thereby high degradation efficiency. The highest degradation of TC antibiotics ∼96.8% and ∼ 69% was observed using WD-BMOX-P-1:2 nanosphere at 1 mg/L and 10 mg/L, of TC antibiotics within 60 min of solar irradiation, respectively. Moreover, ∼88% and 100% photodegradation of TC antibiotics was observed at pH 10 and the presence of H₂O₂ at 10 mg/L, respectively. The data indicate that the synthesized WD-BMOX-P-based nanosphere might be promising solar active agents, which effectively degrade TC antibiotics from water.