Inadequacy of carbamazepine-spiked model wastewaters for testing photocatalysis efficiency

Journal
The science of the total environment  
Volume
542
Start Page
612
End Page
619
Citation
Science of the Total Environment (542): 612-619 (2016-01-15)
Publisher DOI
10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.10.116
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84946811195
Publisher
Elsevier Science
The study was performed in order to clarify whether carbamazepine-spiked solutions used as model wastewaters are suitable for the assessment of carbamazepine removal from real secondary municipal effluents by photocatalytic oxidation in the presence and absence of activated carbon. Therefore, carbamazepine (10mgL-1) was dissolved in deionized water or in secondary municipal effluent. Photocatalytic oxidation of these model wastewaters was carried out with TiO2 "P25" (100mgL-1) and UV-A lamps in the absence and in the presence of 20mgL-1 powdered activated carbon (PAC). Carbamazepine was analyzed photometrically. In deionized water at pH5.5, carbamazepine was nearly completely removed with a UV dose of 6.48kJL-1. Asimilar efficiency of photocatalytic oxidation of carbamazepine added to secondary effluent was , when the suspension pH was 2.7, while at pH8 and 10.6, carbamazepine removal from spiked secondary effluent with the same UV dose was only 40 and 60%, respectively. Although PAC addition resulted in an initial adsorptive carbamazepine reduction of 20 to 35% from the model wastewaters, it did not lead to markedly enhanced carbamazepine removal in the subsequent photocatalysis phase. During photocatalytic oxidation of unspiked secondary effluent (initial carbamazepine concentration: 133ngL-1) at pH7.3 with and without PAC, carbamazepine concentrations were analyzed by HPLC/MS/MS. While PAC addition resulted in the adsorption of about 90% of the initial carbamazepine, photocatalysis did not lead to any carbamazepine removal at all. This indicates that the experiments with spiked model wastewaters - even in a secondary effluent matrix - are absolutely inadequate for predicting photocatalytic carbamazepine removal under real conditions.
Subjects
Activated carbon
Carbamazepine
Matrix
Photocatalytic oxidation
Secondary effluent
DDC Class
620: Ingenieurwissenschaften
More Funding Information
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for having funded the Master studies ofMoses KoladeOgunwithin the International Postgraduate Studies onWater Technologies (IPSWAT) program(project no. IPS 10/06M).