Innovative bi-functional cellulose acetate/BiOCl photocatalytic membrane with excellent antibiotics degradation and photoresponsive antimicrobial performance

The development of photocatalytic membranes with high efficiency for the treatment of organic pollutants such as dyes and antibiotics is essential due to the complexity of the harmful components in the wastewater. In this work, the cellulose acetate/bismuth oxychloride (CA/BiOCl) nanocomposite membrane was in-situ generated by the immersion phase inversion method for photocatalytic degradation of antibiotics and photoresponsive antibiosis. The results show that this CA/BiOCl nanocomposite membrane exhibits an excellent hydrophilicity with a water contact angle of 38.9° and a water flux of 2.66 × 10 4 L (m –2 h –1 bar –1 ). It depicts a high efficiency for the photocatalytic degradation of 97.6 % of tetracycline (TC) within 11 h. Effects of initial TC concentration and pH of solution on the performance of membrane are studied in detail. The membrane also demonstrates a superb cyclic stability, and the degradation efficiency remains 93.6 % after five cycles of recycling. It is found that the photocatalytic degradation of TC is mainly induced by superoxide radicals (·O 2 – ) and holes (h + ). Besides, the membrane also exhibits good photoresponsive antimicrobial properties under light irradiation. Our work provides novel insights on the multifunctional BiOCl-based materials for wastewater treatment.