Integration of polydopamine and Fe3O4 nanoparticles with graphene oxide to fabricate an efficient recoverable catalyst for degradation of sulfadiazine

Contamination of water resources with antibiotics is an emerging environmental issue. This research reports the prosperous preparation of magnetic graphene oxide-polydopamine nanocomposite (M-GO-PDA) for sonocatalytic degradation of sulfadiazine (SDZ) as a model antibiotic pollutant from the aqueous solution. The physico-chemical characteristics of the synthesized catalysts were analyzed by identification analyses including the XRD, SEM, EDX, BET, FT-IR, and DRS. After the operational variables optimization, the highest sonocatalytic degradation of SDZ (93.1%) was obtained using 0.45 g/L catalyst, 0.16 mM SDZ and an ultrasonic power of 300 W at pH = 6.8 (natural) within 60 min. Based on the observed data and GC-MS analysis a possible sonocatalytic mechanism for sonochemical degradation of the SDZ in the presence of M-GO-PDA was proposed. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency of 79.4% as well as considerable increase in the concentrations of , and ions proved the effective mineralization of SDZ w...