Synergistic and efficient degradation of acid red 73 by UV/O3/PDS: Kinetic studies, free radical contributions and degradation pathways

Abstract

Acid red 73 (AR73) is a representative dye pollutant that poses a threat to the environment and human health. Effectively removing this type of pollutant by conventional processes is difficult. However, this study found that compared with UV/PDS, UV/O3, and PDS/O3, UV/O3/PDS composite system had the highest degradation effect on AR73. The degradation efficiency in the composite system reached 97.61% within 30 min, and the synergistic coefficients in the composite system were all greater than 1. In the UV/O3/PDS system, ·OH was the main free radical that mainly degrades AR73. The increase of PDS dosage promoted the degradation of AR73, but the increase of O3 dosage was difficult to greatly improve the degradation of AR73 effect. The kinetic model of the apparent reaction rate was determined. The UV/O3/PDS system can efficiently degrade AR73 in a wide range of substrate concentrations and pH levels, and at the same time showed good adaptability to various concentrations of anions (Cl−, CO32−, SO32−, and C2O42−). Under raw water quality, the degradation effect of AR73 was still as high as approximately 90%. The theoretical attack site was obtained by DFT calculation, and the possible degradation pathway of AR73 was proposed based on the GC-MS spectrum and UV–Vis absorption spectrum. The attack of –NN- by ·OH, SO4−, and O3 was proposed to be the main possible degradation pathway for AR73. Therefore, this study further improves the understanding of the UV/O3/PDS system and shows the potential applicability of this system in the treatment of dye wastewater.