Controlling water pollution are huge challenges throughout the world especially concerning pharmaceutical pollutants. Common practices at industrial wastewater treatment facilities need to be upgraded with advanced wastewater treatment techniques. TiO2 based photocatalytic processes have shown great potential for removal of these aqueous pharmaceutical pollutants. Reverse micelle based modified sol-gel method is utilized for the synthesis of TiO2 nanomaterial. Generated reverse micelle nanodomains have controlled size and particle size distribution (PSD) of synthesized TiO2 nanomaterial, as revealed by SEM and DLS analysis. Thermal behaviour of synthesized sample is characterized by TGA analysis. TiO2 photocatalyst is also characterized through XRD, BET surface area, and UV-Vis spectroscopy. TiO2 photocatalyst is used for degradation of three model pharmaceutical pollutants viz. Levofloxacin hemihydrate (LFX), Metronidazole (MNZ) and Ketorolac tromethamine (KRL) under a UV light source. Reverse micelle mediated modified sol-gel method synthesized TiO2 nanomaterial has shown excellent photocatalytical performance, where degradation efficiency of LFX, KRL and MNZ were found to be 99.6%, 98% and 91.4% respectively within a little as 60 minutes.
Visible-light harvesting innovative W6+/Yb3+/TiO2 materials as a green methodology photocatalyst for the photodegradation of pharmaceutical pollutants