Exceptional levofloxacin adsorption/photo-regeneration cycles using nanosheets-like hollow TiO2 adsorbent: Adsorption performance and mechanism.

Exploring efficient adsorbents still remains an important challenge due to the poor efficiency of the reported adsorbents for the adsorption of antibiotics. Herein, we design and prepare a novel nanosheets-like hollow TiO 2 (NHT) adsorbent by using hollow TiO 2 as a precursor through alkaline hydrothermal treatment. Adsorption results show that NHT exhibits a high adsorption percentage (98.05%) within 20 min and a maximum adsorption uptake of 24.51 mg/g for Levofloxacin (LVOF) pollutant (10 mg/L, 50 mL), which is 17 times higher than that (1.4 mg/g) of pristine hollow TiO 2 (HT). Notably, NHT realizes >91% of the adsorption percentage for LVOF pollutant after the tenth run only through photo-regeneration without extra post-treatments, effectively overcoming the disadvantages of harsh regeneration procedures for most of the existed adsorbents. Adsorption data and the performance characterizations present deep insights into adsorption mechanism, which reveals that pore filling effect, hydrogen-bond interactions, and electrostatic attraction are the key parameters for the excellent adsorption of LVOF by NHT. Therefore, the present study can provide a promising direction for the fabrication of efficient adsorptive photocatalyst by using low-cost TiO 2 as a precursor. [Display omitted] • Novel nanosheets-like hollow TiO 2 (NHT) adsorbent was prepared via a facile alkaline hydrothermal treatment. • NHT adsorbent exhibited higher adsorption capacity of LVOF and faster adsorption kinetics than the present materials. • NHT manifested efficient adsorption of LVOF in ambient factors and real water matrices. • Exceptional levofloxacin adsorption/photo-regeneration cycles were realized by NHT adsorptive photocatalyst. • The efficient adsorption mechanism was ascribed to pore-filling effect, hydrogen bonding, and electrostatic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]