Degradation of chloramphenicol by UV/chlorine treatment: Kinetics, mechanism and enhanced formation of halonitromethanes

Abstract

Ultraviolet (UV)/chlorine process is considered as an emerging advanced oxidation process for the degradation of micropollutants. This study investigated the degradation of chloramphenicol (CAP) and formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) during the UV/chlorine treatment. It was found that CAP degradation was enhanced by combined UV/chlorine treatment compared to that of UV and chlorination treatment alone. The pseudo-first-order rate constant of the UV/chlorine process at pH 7.0 reached 0.016 s−1, which was 10.0 and 2.0 folds that observed from UV and chlorination alone, respectively. The enhancement can be attributed to the formation of diverse radicals (HO and reactive chlorine species (RCSs)), and the contribution of RCSs maintained more stable than that of HO at pH 5.5–8.5. Meanwhile, enhanced DBPs formation during the UV/chlorine treatment was observed. Both the simultaneous formation and 24-h halonitromethanes formation potential (HNMsFP) were positively correlated with the UV/chlorine treatment time. Although the simultaneous trichloronitromethane (TCNM) formation decreased with the prolonged UV irradiation, TCNM dominated the formation of HNMs after 24 h (>97.0%). According to structural analysis of transformation by-products, both the accelerated CAP degradation and enhanced HNMs formation steps were proposed. Overall, the formation of diverse radicals during the UV/chlorine treatment accelerated the degradation of CAP, while also enhanced the formation of DBPs simultaneously, indicating the need for DBPs evaluation before the application of combined UV/chlorine process.