Degradation of pefloxacin by hybrid hydrodynamic cavitation with H2O2 and O3

Abstract

The degradation of toxic chemicals, antibiotics and other residues in organic wastewater has attracted much attention. Among various degradation technologies, hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) reactors have the advantage of being simple to operate. Through the combination of HC and other oxidants, the removal efficiency and energy efficiency of organic matter can be greatly improved, and the consumption of chemicals and the processing costs can be reduced. In this work, HC technology combined with oxidants was used to degrade pefloxacin (PEF), and the effect of different operating conditions on PEF degradation was investigated. The results indicated that the removal efficiency of PEF treated with HC alone was 84.9% under the optimal HC conditions of pH 3.3 and 120 min, which is much higher than that (35.5%) of pH 5.3. When co-treating the PEF solution with HC and H₂O₂ at 0.3 MPa and pH 5.3, the optimal molar ratio of PEF to H₂O₂ was 1:5, the highest PEF removal efficiency was 69.7%, and the synergy index (SI) was 4.4. When combining HC with O₃, the PEF removal efficiency gradually elevated with increasing ozone addition. When the addition amount of ozone was 0.675 g/h, the removal efficiency of PEF was the highest, which was 91.5% after treatment of 20 min. The intermediate products in the reaction process were analyzed based on UV-Vis spectroscopy and LC-MS, and the mechanism and reaction pathways of PEF were proposed.

Keywords: Antibiotic wastewater; Hydrodynamic cavitation; Oxidant; Pefloxacin; Removal efficiency; Synergy index.