Photodegradation of six selected antipsychiatric drugs; carbamazepine, sertraline, amisulpride, amitriptyline, diazepam, and alprazolam in environment: efficiency, pathway, and mechanism—a review

Abstract

Psychiatric drugs do not vanish after being carried to wastewater treatment plants by the urine or feces of patients and, a variable portion of their dose and also unused or expired drugs are lost to the environment. This is because the technology of plants is not intended to eradicate pharmaceuticals and their metabolites. Above all, psychotropics can change population dynamics and behavior at lower doses. We believe that antipsychotics have not gotten enough attention when it comes to drug pollution and that their importance as environmental pollutants has been underestimated. An innovative approach to eliminating pharmaceutical pollutants from water is the application of advanced oxidation methods. Among these oxidation methods are photocatalysis, ozonation, UV/hydrogen peroxide oxidation, and photo-Fenton oxidation. Photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals is now the most widely used method since it is affordable and ecologically beneficial due to the reusable nature of the photocatalyst. When light is absorbed during photocatalytic degradation, electrons in the valence band (VB) get excited and migrate into the conduction band (CB). Consequently, hydroxyl radicals (•OH) are produced by VB’s holes carrying out oxidation processes on photocatalyst surfaces. The charge difference between the two bands encourages reduction reactions by CB electrons at the surface. To perform successfully, a photocatalyst has to have enough surface-active sites, a favorable band edge location, modest bandgap energy, increased charge separation, and charge transfer. Due to the above-mentioned concerns, the investigation and analysis of the photocatalytic degradation of six psychiatric drugs—carbamazepine, sertraline, amisulpride, amitriptyline, diazepam, and alprazolam—are the main objectives of this review.