Abstract
In recent years, more and more pollutants (including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, chemicals) are detected in the aquatic environment. Even if they are encountered in very low concentrations, the toxicological data reveal that they represent a major risk both for the water living organisms and for human beings. Moreover, an important resistance to the classical methods applied at wastewater treatment plants characterizes them. Aeration, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, oxidation, activated sludge treatments are often either insufficient or completely ineffective. To overcome these drawbacks, many researches were dedicated to the development of new effective techniques for the removal of these water pollutants. Advanced oxidation methods are widely reported as being of the most efficient ones. In this article, we investigate the utility of the photocatalysis as a sustainable alternative for the enhanced elimination of an emergent water micropollutant. We evaluate here the impact of several parameters (catalyst type and concentration, contaminant concentration, radiant flux intensity) on the process efficiency. The targeted compound involved in the experiments was the pentoxifylline (a drug used in the treatment of diseases such as diabetic neuropathy, osteoradionecrosis or hepatic fibrogenesis). The registered pollutant removal rate under the selected reaction conditions (photocatalyst type: ZnO; photocatalyst concentration: 0.5 g/L; incident light flux: 9.52 mW/cm2; natural pH) reached values near to 100 % providing new insights on the viability and the efficiency of the evaluated methodology.
Highlights
Water micropollutants are known as contaminants found in small concentrations in the aquatic environment [1]
The registered data reveal that the photocatalysis can be successfully employed to remove refractory contaminants from aqueous solutions
The experiments indicated that photolysis and adsorption mechanisms had a negligible influence on the removal efficiency, both UV-A and catalyst being necessary for the molecule degradation
Summary
Water micropollutants are known as contaminants found in small concentrations (trace levels of ng/L to μg/L) in the aquatic environment [1] They include various types of natural or synthetic substances such as drugs (antidiabetic medicines, anaesthetics, analgesics, anti-inflammatories, antihypertensives, antivirals, fungicides, antibiotics, diuretics, anxiolytics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antihistamines, lipid-regulators) [2,3,4], personal care products (fragrances, disinfectants, UV filters, repellents) [5, 6], hormones (estrogens, testosterone, progesterone, mestranol) [7,8,9], chemicals (plasticizers, surfactants, dyes) used in different industrial areas (food, textile, paint, polymers) [10, 11], pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides) [12, 13] etc.
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