Ibuprofen removal from drinking water by electro-peroxone in carbon cloth filter

Abstract

An electro-peroxone filtration (EPF) process was investigated in this study for enhanced removals of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) through water-permeable electrodes. To determine the efficacy of this process, a carbon cloth was pressed onto porous PTFE membrane and used as cathode to filter ibuprofen (IBU), an ozone-resistant PPCP, as a target contaminant. This cathode was capable of using dissolved oxygen for in-situ generation of H2O2 at up to 9.29 mg L−1 and a high current efficiency of 87.86%. H2O2 subsequently reacted with influent O3 to produce •OH at a maximal O3 decomposition rate of 30.72%, significantly higher than traditional peroxone due to the permeation-induced mass transport and in-situ generation of H2O2. The removal efficiency of IBU in EPF was further assessed in parallel to adsorptive filtration (AF), ozonation and filtration (OF), electrochemical filtration (EF), and peroxone filtration (PF). Compared to the rapidly depleted adsorption capacity in AP, EPF consistently removed 64.87 ± 1.56% of IBU, which was also more than 20% greater than that obtained in PF, and three times higher than those obtained by OF and EF. Overall, this study demonstrated that EPF has a potential for PPCP removal from contaminated water.