Use of the photo-Fenton process to discover the degradation of drugs present in water from the Wastewater Treatment Plants of the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Advanced oxidation processes (AOP) have been used in effluent treatment in order to degrade the composites that persist in the environment even after conventional treatment. This work employs AOP (known asthe photo-Fenton process) to study the degradation of the pharmaceutical acetylsalicylic acid, diclofenac, dipyrone and paracetamol in different effluents from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs). The data collected from the different effluents, which were obtained by mean of a chromatographic analysis, showed that 3 out of the 4 pharmaceuticals analysed were detected in concentrations that ranged from 0.29mg∙L-1 to 3.96mg∙L-1. The photodegradation study using UV-C radiation showed that the photo-Fenton process managed to degrade between 71.9% and 100% of the pollutants. Furthermore, it promoted the conversion of 66.5% of organic material, as the lumped kinetic model satisfactorily represents the kinetics of the process. The toxicity trials verified that the photo-Fenton process did not generate toxic intermediaries once the seeds had germinated.