Investigation of photocatalytic performance of ternary nanocomposites (silver/ titanium dioxide nanosheets/reduced graphene oxide) for degradation of tetracycline and modeling the process by ANFIS

In this research, ternary nanocomposites, Ag/rGO-TiO2 (x) were synthesized through the photodeposition of different amounts of silver on titanium dioxide nanosheets (TNs) combined with reduced graphene oxide (rGO (. Different techniques such as XRD, FESEM/EDX, TEM, DRS and Raman spectroscopy were employed for structural and morphological characterization of the synthesized samples. The photocatalytic degradation experiments were carried out in the presence of 75 mg of the prepared samples in 100 mL of the aqueous solution of tetracycline with 30 mg/L concentration under visible light. The best photocatalytic performance was related to the ternary nanocomposite Ag/rGO-TiO2 (0.076) (synthesized in the presence of 0.076 g AgNO3) with the percentage of TC degradation equal to 52.56%, the can be attributed to plasmonic resonance of silver plasmonic nanoparticles. The removal percentage of tetracycline was 37.93% in the exstance of pure titanium dioxide nanosheets (TNs) under the same conditions. Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system was used for modeling and prediction of the photocatalytic performance of the synthesized ternary nanocomposites.