Transformation of ranitidine during water chlorination and ozonation: Moiety-specific reaction kinetics and elimination efficiency of NDMA formation potential

Abstract

Ranitidine can produce high yields of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) upon chloramination and its presence in water resources is a concern for water utilities using chloramine disinfection. This study assessed the efficiency of water chlorination and ozonation in transforming ranitidine and eliminating its NDMA formation potential (NDMA-FP) by determining moiety-specific reaction kinetics, stoichiometric factors, and elimination levels in real water matrices. Despite the fact that chlorine reacts rapidly with the acetamidine and thioether moieties of ranitidine (k>108M−1s−1 at pH 7), the NDMA-FP decreases significantly only when chlorine reacts with the less reactive tertiary amine (k=3×103M−1s−1 at pH 7) or furan moiety (k=81M−1s−1 at pH 7). Ozone reacts rapidly with all four moieties of ranitidine (k=1.5×105−1.6×106M−1s−1 at pH 7) and its reaction with the tertiary amine or furan moiety leads to complete elimination of the NDMA-FP. Treatments of ranitidine-spiked real water samples have shown that ozonation can efficiently deactivate ranitidine in water and wastewater treatment, while chlorination can be efficient for water containing low concentration of ammonia. This result can be applied to the other structurally similar, potent NDMA precursors.