The widespread presence of antibiotics in the aquatic environment has attracted extensive concern from researchers in the world. In this study, the degradation of several fluoroquinolone antibiotics-ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin and enrofloxacin by thermally activated persulfate based on sulfate radical was investigated. The results indicated that�SO4-produced by thermally activated persulfate could oxidize fluoroquinolone antibiotics effectively and the degradation rate rose with the increase of persulfate while decreased with the pH ascended. Cl-, NO3-, PO43- and CO32- in the solutions made diverse effects on reactions. Frontier molecular orbital theory was utilized to combine the identifications in LC-MS-MS to propose the mechanism and scheme on degradation of fluoroquinolone antibiotics. The results showed that the oxidation of fluoroquinolone antibiotics consist of the attack on C-F and C-H bonds by �SO4- leading to the hydrolysis, substitution, dehydrogenation reaction and oxidation on piperazine group resulting in the open-loop cleavage.

Kinetics model and mechanism on oxidation of fluoroquinolones with thermally activated persulfate

248th National Meeting (2014)

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