Efficiency comparison for treatment of amantadine pharmaceutical wastewater by Fenton, ultrasonic, and Fenton/ultrasonic processes

Abstract

Amantadine wastewater is quite recalcitrant to biological treatment because of the quite stable adamantine backbone. To improve amantadine wastewater biodegradability, the combined advanced oxidation process, such as Fenton/ultrasonic process, was proposed to treat amantadine industrial wastewater. The efficiency comparisons for the treatment of amantadine wastewater using Fenton oxidation, ultrasonic process, and Fenton/ultrasonic process were conducted. The results of wastewater treatment with Fenton/ultrasonic process indicated that the TOC removal reached 65.6 %, showing almost 4 times of the degradation rate by individual oxidizing action of hydrogen peroxide. Kinetic study revealed that degradation of amantadine wastewater fitted first order kinetics for the three processes under investigation. The synergistic index (f) for the combined process was calculated as 2.24, indicating an obvious synergy effect. The energy consumption for hydrodynamic cavitation-based process has been analyzed on the basis of cavitational yield. Fenton and combined processes reduced the toxicity of wastewater by 50 and 55 %, respectively, while ultrasonic process showed no obvious effect on toxicity reduction. The monitoring of treated wastewater by EEM and GC–MS showed that the Fenton/ultrasonic process effectively removed the organic matters in the wastewater, especially the biodegradation-resistant matters containing benzene ring.