Photoassisted synthesis of high-crystallinity TS-1 with triblock copolymer F127 and its application for photodegradation of erythromycin

As a successful industrial catalyst, titanium silicalite-1 zeolite (TS-1) is limited as a photocatalyst in wastewater treatment due to the complexity and high energy consumption of its synthesis. Here, a novel synthesis hierarchical TS-1 was developed using triblock copolymer F127 and a phototreatment synthesis method. This method resulted in a super high crystallinity of the synthesized TS-1. A synthesis mechanism was proposed, and some reactions between Si and Ti species were studied by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Compared to TS-1 synthesized using the conventional method, the catalyst in this study exhibited superior performance in the interfacial charge transport efficiency. In the removal of the antibiotic erythromycin from water, the synthesized catalyst demonstrated exceptional performance in terms of adsorption, photoactivity, stability and anti-interference ability against pH, anions, and cations. These findings suggested that the synthesis method used in this work is feasible, and the TS-1 products have great potential in pollutant degradation.