Present study used ecofriendly, cost efficient and easy method for synthesis of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) at the room temperature by Thymus Kotschyanus extract as reducing and capping agent. Various analytical technique including UV–Vis absorption spectroscopy determined presence of Ag NPs in the solution, the functional groups of Thymus Kotschyanus extract in the reduction and capping process of Ag NPs are approved by FT‐IR, crystallinity with the fcc plane approved from the X‐ray diffraction (XRD) pattern, energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) determined existence of elements in the sample, surface morphology, diverse shapes and size of present Ag NPs were showed by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Beginning and end destroy temperature of present silver nanoparticles were determined by thermal gravimetric spectroscopy (TGA). In addition, antibacterial, antioxidant and cytotoxicity properties of Ag NPs were studied. Agar disk and agar well diffusion are the methods to determined antibacterial properties of synthesized Ag NPs. Also MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) and MBC (Minimum Bactericidal Concentration) were recognized by macro broth dilution assay. DPPH free radical scavenging assay was used for antioxidant property and compare to butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) as standard antioxidant that showed high antioxidant activity more than BHT. Synthesized Ag NPs have great cell viability in a dose depended manner and demonstrate that this method for synthesis silver nanoparticles provided nontoxic. The average diameter of synthesized Ag NPs was about 50–60 nm.

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Aqueous solutions of quinoline (Qu) were treated with photo‐activated potassium periodate (UV/KPI) process. A low consumption, cylindrical photo‐reactor was employed for this purpose. Either KPI oxidant or UV irradiation alone had little effect in Qu degradation; however, the combined UV/KPI process leads to significant degradation and mineralization. Experiments were conducted based on central composite design (CCD) methodology. The established optimized conditions for treatment of 40 mg L−1 of the substrate were [KPI] = 695.5 mg L−1, pH = 4.3 and T = 35.6 °C. Under these conditions, 96.5% degradation and 71.5% mineralization were obtained after 70 min operations. A quadratic equation predicts the variation of degradation efficiency as a function of the influencing parameters. To investigate about the involved species, tert‐butyl alcohol was used as radical scavenger and it was found that the contribution of hydroxyl radical was about 73.1%. Kinetic study revealed that Qu degradation was a pseudo first‐order reaction and the corresponding activation energy was determined. Meanwhile, the required irradiation energy for one order of magnitude degradation was estimated as 3.13 kWh m−3. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1621–1627, 2017