Facile Synthesis of Nanostructured Mn-Doped Ag3PO4 for Visible Photodegradation of Emerging Pharmaceutical Contaminants: Streptomycin Photodegradation

Abstract

Silver phosphate (Ag PO ) exhibits high quantum efficiency and fascinating photocatalytic ability; however, its poor light stability limits its full application. Herein, structurally stable and porous pure Ag PO and Mn-Ag PO nanoparticles are fabricated via the ion-exchange technique. It promotes the potential of Mn-doping to enhance the visible photocatalytic performance of streptomycin, an important class of these antibiotics. Photodegradation using Mn-Ag PO is an eco-friendly green wastewater treatment way. XRD, SEM, zeta potential, and UV–Vis characterized the as-prepared samples. The photodegradation process obeyed first-order Langmuir–Hinshelwood kinetics. Noticeably, 15% Mn-Ag PO composite showed optimum photocatalytic efficiency up to 98% within 30 min, with a rate constant of about 0.15 min due to more H O generation. Cyclic experiments showed the Mn-Ag PO composite’s stability over repeated use. Via HPLC/MS study, a mechanism of streptomycin photodegradation, has been proposed and verified. Trapping experiments of active streptomycin photocatalytic reaction species using 15% Mn-Ag PO were studied using 200 mM scavengers under visible light irradiation. Mn-Ag PO was achieved as a promising visible photocatalysis to treat a considerable amount of pharmaceutical wastewater instead of the lab scale. 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 4 3 4 −1