Full Factorial Experimental Design for Carbamazepine Removal Using Electrochemical Process: a Case Study of Scheming the Pathway Degradation

Fouad Al-Qaim,Ali Yuzir,Zainab Mussa,Mohamed Othman,Md Abdullah

doi:10.21577/0103-5053.20180047

Abstract

Carbamazepine is an antiepileptic drug which is considered one of the persistent compounds detected in Malaysian aquatic environment. In this present study, a full factorial experimental design was applied for the analysis of effect NaCl amount, initial concentration of carbamazepine, applied voltage and treatment time on the electrochemical removal percentage of carbamazepine. However, applied voltage was found as the most significant factor with p = 0.00 lower than 95% confidence level. The investigation of effect NaCl and Na2SO4 on the pathway degradation for carbamazepine was provided using liquid chromatography-time of flight/mass spectrometry (LC-TOF/MS). The results showed that new by-products were identified such chloro-epoxy carbamazepine, and other by-products, were detected in the presence of NaCl and Na2SO4 electrolytes. High inhibition percentage of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria was observed at 24.0 h incubation time for both NaCl and Na2SO4 electrolytes after 80 and 20 min of treatment, respectively.

Highlights

The occurrence of some emerging compounds like pharmaceuticals in water samples has been considered as one of the emerging issue in environment chemistry
The electrochemical degradation of carbamazepine usually depends on some factors such as NaCl amount, initial concentration of CBZ, applied voltage and treatment time
Forty-eight experiments were tested for CBZ electrochemical degradation using 24 full factorial design and three replications of each experiment

Summary

Introduction

The occurrence of some emerging compounds like pharmaceuticals in water samples has been considered as one of the emerging issue in environment chemistry. The widespread presence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment could be attributed to their extensive use in medical practice and incomplete removal in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs).[1,2,3,4,5] One of these emerging compounds is carbamazepine (CBZ) (C15H12N2O), which is one of the most widely used antiepileptic drugs. According to many previous studies, carbamazepine is considered one of the most resistant compound for both conventional and advanced wastewater treatment process. Electrochemical oxidation process is widely applied to degrade the organic pollutants as reported in previous studies.[14,15,16,17] An important advantage of electrochemical oxidation is the ability to degrade the organic pollutants completely to CO2 and water.[18]

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Conclusion