DEGRADATION OF SULFAMETHOXAZOLE BY NON-THERMAL PLASMA DISCHARGE

conference proceedings

English

The widespread use of pharmaceuticals (including antibiotics) plays a key role in the management of diseases in humans and livestock. Nowadays the consumption of pharmaceuticals is still growing. Nevertheless, depending on pharmacokinetics, specific transformation processes, and the pharmaceutical class, between 30 % to 90 % of the drug dosage can be excreted nonmetabolized in form of feces or urine. Some of the pharmaceuticals (PhACs) from human and animal sources are not fully removed in a conventional wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and therefore they can be found in the effluent of WWTPs and their sewage sludge. PhACs residues can also enter the terrestrial environment following soil applications of contaminated wastewater (recycled water) and contaminated biosolids (e.g., treated sewage sludge). In Europe, the recycling practice of treated wastewater or sewage sludge onto soils is widely encouraged, as part of the circular economy. Although this circular economy may indirectly contribute to the spread of pharmaceutical residues into the environment. Increasing concentrations of antimicrobials in the aquatic and soil environment are a potential threat to all microorganisms. As even low antibiotic concentrations provide an environment for an uprise of antimicrobial resistance. Soil contaminated with antibiotic residues causes the selective growth of resistant bacteria, which alters the susceptibility of entire microbial communities to antibiotics. Resistance genes can also be inadvertently transferred between animals, humans, and the environment. Therefore the aim of the research was to develop a new technological process, that can remove these micropollutants in wastewater sufficiently. One of the options is that conventional methods used at WWTPs would be supplemented with advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), which would work as a tertiary cleaning process on WWTPs. The non-thermal plasma (NTP) discharge was used for the removal of sulfamethoxazole, as the representative of AOPs. The NTP was used to remove sulfamethoxazole from artificially prepared aqueous solutions of different pH and also from wastewater spiked with sulfamethoxazole in order to investigate the influence of wastewater matrix on the removal rate of sulfamethoxazole. Samples containing sulfamethoxazole were processed by SPE if necessary, followed by LC-ESI-MS/MS analysis. Reaction rate coefficients (pseudo-first-order kinetic model) are calculated to compare the influence of pH and the influence of the wastewater matrix on the removal rate of sulfamethoxazole.

sulfamethoxazole, advanced oxidation processes, plasma discharge in liquid, liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry

FUČÍK, J.; TULKOVÁ, T.; KOZÁKOVÁ, Z.; MRAVCOVÁ, L.

28. 4. 2022

University of Split, Faculty of Chemistry and Technology, Croatia

Split, Croatia

978-953-7803-16-2

3rd ZORH CONFERENCE, SPLIT, APRIL, 28th-29th, 2022

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