Issue 7, 2009

Application of solar advanced oxidation processes to the degradation of the antibioticsulfamethoxazole

Abstract

This work deals with the treatment of highly concentrated sulfamethoxazole (SMX) solutions by some advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) that have not been studied until now. The antibiotic has been subjected to oxidation by photolysis, UV/H2O2 and photo-Fenton using both artificial light and sunlight as radiation sources depending on the installation scale. SMX, total organic carbon (TOC) and chemical oxygen demand (COD), as well as the generation of NH4+, NO3 and SO42−, were followed. SMX photolytic degradation efficiency followed the ranking: 254 nm lamps > sunlight > black–light blue (BLB) lamps (negligible for the latter). The highest eliminations were obtained by means of UV/H2O2 reaction in a lab-scale reactor (254 nm lamps) with an initial H2O2 concentration of 200 mg L−1: ΔTOC = 62.3%; ΔCOD = 79.1% (more than 6 h). Similar removals were achieved with a lab-scale photo-Fenton reactor (BLB lamps) but using 400 mg L−1 of oxidant (94 min). The use of solar light appeared to be an interesting option since satisfactory results were obtained in the solar-based photo-Fenton experiments compared to the lab-scale ones, and also since a significant improvement with respect to the solar photolysis was achieved when performing the UV/H2O2 reaction with sunlight. Finally, some of the resultant effluents from different reactions were subjected to a short-term biodegradability test in order to estimate their quality from a biological point of view.

Graphical abstract: Application of solar advanced oxidation processes to the degradation of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Dec 2008
Accepted
18 May 2009
First published
03 Jun 2009

Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2009,8, 1032-1039

Application of solar advanced oxidation processes to the degradation of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole

O. González, C. Sans, S. Esplugas and S. Malato, Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2009, 8, 1032 DOI: 10.1039/B822658J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Spotlight

Advertisements