Abstract
Industrialization and the growing consumption of medicines leads to global aquatic contamination. One of the antibiotics widely used against bacterial infections in both human and veterinary medicine is tetracycline. Despite its positive antibiotic action, tetracycline is resistant against degradation, and therefore it accumulates in the environment, including the aquatic environment, creating great health hazards, possibly stimulating antibiotic resistance of pathogenic organisms. In this research, aqueous suspensions of semiconductor nanoparticles CdS were used for photocatalytic activity studies in the presence of methylene blue as a model compound, and finally, in the presence of tetracycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic widely used against bacterial infections, as well as a live-stock food additive. The mechanism and kinetic rate constants of photocatalytic degradation processes of methylene blue and tetracycline were described in correlation with the energy diagram of CdS nanoparticles.