Performance test and analysis of tetracycline degradation using a Micro-Nano Bubble system

Abstract

Antibiotics and organic residues from Tetracycline (TC) and other pharmaceuticals administered to aquatic living organism have negative impacts on aquatic environment by killing-off non-target living organisms and developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In this study, Micro-Nano Bubble (MNB) system was used to remove TC residues. MNB system demonstrated good level of degradation efficiency, as resulted in experiment where in time of 100 min, the TC degraded at rate of 82.66% from its initial concentration of TC when the initial concentration was 1 mg/L. When the initial concentration was increased to 10 mg/L, MNB system degraded TC at 64.35% of their initial, this means MNB system demonstrated good level of efficiency for TC removal and indicated that it is more efficient in TC degradation under the conditions of low initial TC concentration and high availability of dissolved oxygen (DO). In the system as the temperature increased there was a significant decrease in DO saturation which was related to the TC complex structure that contain multiple function groups such as amino groups, hydroxyl and carboxyl which possess high strong affinity with oxygen that leads to their adsorption onto bubble surface. This study provides significant insights into the application of MNB system for the removal of organic residues within aquatic ecosystem and underscores the need for further exploration of MNB technology for environmental remediation.