Abstract
The rising pollution of surface water by endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCS) could lead to the persistent harm of aquatic wildlife. Addressing this concern, advanced waste water treatment techniques should be established in addition to the present sewage treatment. Therefore, the promising advanced oxidation process of photocatalysis is discussed. With the aim of establishing a novel high throughput screening approach for photocatalysts, a workflow resting upon the use of a self-constructed 60-fold parallel stirring UV-A LED photoreactor, followed by parallel sample extraction by SPE and sequential automated analysis by GC-MS, was developed, and is presented in this article. With the described system, TiO2-based photocatalysts, doped with different amounts of zinc, and synthesised by a sol-gel-route, were tested regarding their activity in the photocatalytic degradation of the synthetic estrogen 17α-ethinylestradiol. Thereby, the functional behavior of the photoreactor system and its applicability in a high throughput process could be evaluated. As a result of the catalyst screening, TiO2 catalysts with low amounts of zinc were found with a significantly higher activity, compared to undoped TiO2. In conclusion, the presented system provides an easily accessible high throughput method for a variety of photocatalytic experiments.
Highlights
Considering the growing human population [1] and ever-expanding industries, humankind is confronted with an increasing quantity of pollutants in sewage and the landscape [2]
A wide variety of substances is discharged into nature [3,4], but in particular only one type of them aroused special attention in the past, the endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) [5]
While the database lags of information about the influence of EDCs on the human body, there are indications that the negative effects of these chemicals observed in wildlife could be carried over to humans as well [9,10]
Summary
Considering the growing human population [1] and ever-expanding industries, humankind is confronted with an increasing quantity of pollutants in sewage and the landscape [2]. A wide variety of substances is discharged into nature [3,4], but in particular only one type of them aroused special attention in the past, the endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) [5] They are known for their ability to interfere with the hormone system of vertebrates, and influence it in a way restricting these species in their fertility and ability to mate with conspecifics [6,7,8]. While the database lags of information about the influence of EDCs on the human body, there are indications that the negative effects of these chemicals observed in wildlife could be carried over to humans as well [9,10] Examples for this group of hazardous pollutants are steroids, naturally-formed, like estron (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2) and estriol (E3), or synthetically-obtained, such as 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), which is used in hormonal contraceptives. These estrogens are excreted by animals as well as by humans, finding their way into nature
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