This study is about the degradability of three common analgesic pharmaceuticals: diclofenac (DCF), ibuprofen (IBP) and paracetamol (PCT) by ultrasound (US) and US-assisted catalysis. In general, it was found that US catalyzes ozonation, improves the activity of catalysts, and enhances the photolytic decay reactions of the target compounds. Sonolysis of DCF showed that the early oxidation byproducts were more toxic than DCF, but toxicity declined with enhanced reaction time, reaching a “non-toxic” level after 90 min [1]. Simultaneous processes such as O3/US/UV and O3/US/Fe2+ were significantly more effective than singly applied ozonation, sonolysis or photolysis [2]. The study also showed that sonolysis in the presence of nano-ZVI was much more effective than that using micro-ZVI or soluble Fe2+ [3]. Catalytic ozonation in the presence of US and various Fe-bearing species showed that despite the low reactivity of some of the target chemicals with ozone, the process was considerably fast particularly in the presence of ZVI-graphite [4]. Finally, the study has highlighted the contribution of noble metals (used for modifying the surface of metallic oxides) in improving the efficiency of the test compounds degradation by catalytic ozonation, sonolysis and sono-photolysis [5, 6].

Elimination of analgesic residuals in water by ultrasound and ultrasound-assisted catalytic processes

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.