Photochemical oxidation is an important process in the transformation of effluent organic matters in the wastewater. However, it is difficult to investigate the transformation of organic matters by target analysis due to the complex and huge variety of compounds. High resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) associated with MS library and multivariate statistical strategies offer the opportunity to track large numbers of non-target compounds through photochemical oxidation, providing a more comprehensive view of the transformation of wastewater effluent organic matters. In this study, thousands of features were extracted from the irradiated effluents via high-resolution ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) by applying a recursive feature extraction. Hundreds of compounds were identified through the libraries, including Agilent ForensicsTox LC/MS PCDL with 7360 compounds and Agilent Pesticide LC/MS PCDL with 1627 compounds and Agilent Water Contaminant LC/MS PCDL with 1451 compounds and a surfactant PCDL with 394 compounds. Principle component analysis (PCA) was performed to observe the variations in the chemical profiles between the non-irradiated effluent and the irradiated effluent at various simulated solar irradiation times. The results indicated the change of chemical profiles of the effluents after solar irradiation. The K-means clustering successfully classify the compounds into four groups: (I) the photo-resistant compounds; (II) the photo-labile precursors; (III) the photo-stable transformation products; and (IV) the photo-labile transformation products. Ultraviolet-visible (UV) spectra and fluorescence spectra effluents attenuated after irradiation. Furthermore, the relation between the change of chemical profile and the change of spectral properties were investigated.

Photochemical oxidation of effluent organic matters: HRMS Characterization

254th National Meeting (2017)

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