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In this study, ZnO-Zn 2 TiO 4 (ZTM) material was prepared through a novel synthesis method based on a ultrasound-assisted polyol-mediated process followed by calcination at a different temperature. Physical features of the samples were studied by using various analysis techniques including XRD, FT-IR, SEM/EDX, pH PZC , and UV–Vis DRS. Subsequently, the materials were employed as catalysts for the photocatalytic degradation of clofibric acid as a model pharmaceutical contaminant. The photocatalytic performance was evaluated under different conditions of calcination temperature, catalyst dosage, starting concentration, and initial pH of clofibric acid solution. The finding results revealed that hexagonal-tetragonal phases of ZnO-Zn 2 TiO 4 calcined at 600 °C (ZTM-600) with an average crystallite size of 97.8 Å exhibited the best degradation efficiency (99%). The primary bands characteristic of ZnO and Zn 2 TiO 4 were displayed by FT-IR analysis and the UV–visible DRS confirms the larger absorption capacity in UV–visible regions. The photogenerated electrons are the powerful reactive species involved in clofibric acid photodegradation process. This study shows a promising photocatalyst and provides new sight to rational design the facets of photocatalysis process for enhanced photocatalytic performances and effective wastewater treatment.

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In the present work, we prepared MgO-La2O3-mixed-metal oxides (MMO) as efficient photocatalysts for degradation of organic pollutants. First, a series of MgAl-%La-CO3 layered double hydroxide (LDH) precursors with different content of La (5, 10 and 20 wt%) were synthesized by the co-precipitation process and then calcined at 600°C. The prepared materials were characterized by XRD, SEM-EDX, FTIR, TGA, ICP and UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. XRD indicated that MgO, La2O3 and MgAl2O4 phases were found to coexist in the calcined materials. Also, XRD confirms the orthorhombic-tetragonal phases of MgO-La2O3. The samples exhibited a small band gap of 3.0-3.22 eV based on DRS. The photocatalytic activity of the catalysts was assessed for the degradation of two dyes namely Tartrazine (TZ) and Patent Blue (PB) as model organic pollutants in aqueous mediums under UV-Visible light. Detailed photocatalytic tests that focused on the impacts of dopant amount of La, catalyst dose, initial pH of the solution, irradiation time, dye concentration, and reuse were carried out and discussed in this research. The experimental findings reveal that the highest photocatalytic activity was achieved with the MgO-La2O3-10% MMO with photocatalysts with a degradation efficiency of 97.4% and 93.87% for TZ and PB, respectively within 150 min of irradiation. The addition of La to the sample was responsible for its highest photocatalytic activity. Response surface methodology (RSM) and Gradient Boosting Regressor (GBR), as artificial intelligence techniques were employed to assess individual and interactive influences of initial dye concentration, catalyst dose, initial pH and irradiation time on the degradation performance. The GBR technique predicts the degradation efficiency results with R2 = 0.98 for both TZ and PB. Moreover, ANOVA analysis employing CCD-RSM reveals a high agreement between the quadratic model predictions and the experimental results for TZ and PB (R2 = 0.9327 and Adj-R2 = 0.8699, R2 = 0.9574 and Adj-R2 = 0.8704, respectively). Optimization outcomes indicated that maximum degradation efficiency was attained under the optimum conditions: catalyst dose 0.3 g/L, initial dye concentration 20 mg/L, pH 4, and reaction time 150 min. On the whole, this studyconfirms that the proposed artificial intelligence (AI) techniques constituted reliable and robust computer techniques for monitoring and modeling the photodegradation of organic pollutants from aqueous mediums by MgO-La2O3-MMO heterostructure catalysts.