Investigating the treatment of wastewater containing antibiotics by nanophotocatalytic method

Today, along with the progress of the industry, water pollution is also increasing. Pollutants enter the underground sources and surface waters from various routes and become a potential threat to human health and other organisms in the life cycle. Although various methods have been used to purify water and wastewater, most of these methods are not effective enough to remove many persistent organic pollutants, such as dyes, drugs, solvents, pesticides, etc. Antibiotics are among persistent organic pollutants that are rarely completely metabolized in the body after consumption, and 30 to 90% of them remain as active pollutants in the environment after elimination. Therefore, the use of new methods such as photocatalytic processes for antibiotics treatment have attracted the attention of researchers. The use of heterogeneous semiconductor nano photocatalysts as one of the advanced oxidation processes is considered due to their advantages including short-time procedure for synthesis of nano photocatalysts, nano photocatalyst ability to recycle and reuse, the formation of harmless products during the reaction, economic efficiency and compatibility with the environment. So, this approach can be an effective and efficient way to deal with environmental pollution caused by antibiotics. In this article, in addition to introducing the advanced oxidation method, recent studies on using of heterogeneous nano photocatalysts and most effective factors on photocatalytic reaction in water and wastewater treatment containing antibiotics have been reviewed.