Degradation pathways of lamotrigine under advanced treatment by direct UV photolysis, hydroxyl radicals, and ozone

Abstract

Lamotrigine is recently recognized as a persistent pharmaceutical in the water environment and wastewater effluents. Its degradation was studied under UV and ozone advanced oxidation treatments with reaction kinetics of lamotrigine with ozone (≈4M−1s−1), hydroxyl radical [(2.1±0.3)×109M−1s−1] and by UV photolysis with low and medium pressure mercury vapor lamps [quantum yields ≈0 and (2.7±0.4)×10−4 respectively] determined. All constants were measured at pH 6 and at temperature ≈20°C. The results indicate that lamotrigine is slow to respond to direct photolysis or oxidation by ozone and no attenuation of the contaminant is expected in UV or ozone disinfection applications. The compound reacts rapidly with hydroxyl radicals indicating that advanced oxidation processes would be effective for its treatment. Degradation products were identified under each treatment process using accurate mass time-of-flight spectrometry and pathways of decay were proposed. The main transformation pathways in each process were: dechlorination of the benzene ring during direct photolysis; hydroxyl group addition to the benzene ring during the reaction with hydroxyl radicals; and triazine ring opening after reaction with ozone. Different products that form in each process may be to a varying degree less environmentally stable than the parent lamotrigine. In addition, a novel method of ozone quenching without addition of salts is presented. The new quenching method would allow subsequent mass spectrometry analysis without a solid phase extraction clean-up step. The method involves raising the pH of the sample to approximately 10 for a few seconds and lowering it back and is therefore limited to applications for which temporary pH change is not expected to affect the outcome of the analysis.