Synthesizing S-doped graphitic carbon nitride for improvement photodegradation of tetracycline under solar light

Abstract Due to the coronavirus problem in 2020, lot of antibiotic compounds such as tetracycline (TC) have been used and discharge into water, leading to environment and human heal problem. Thus, preparing new catalysts for tetracycline removal have become a significant challenge in the areas of environmental engineering. Here we provide advanced photocatalyst based on sulfur (S) doped carbon nitride (CN) for treatment of TC. The characterization results confirmed that S doping reduced the recombination rates of electrons and holes, improved light absorption behavior. Under solar light the removal of TC just required only 30 mins and the degradation efficiency was 98.7%. S doped CN was able to degrade TC from different wastewaters with a maximum degradation efficiency of 93.8%. Furthermore, S-CN can be recycled multiple times, indicating it is suitable photocatalyst to solve the problem of antibiotic contamination in wastewaters.