Enhanced removal of antibiotics from secondary wastewater effluents by novel UV/pre-magnetized Fe 0 /H 2 O 2 process.

Antibiotics have been frequently detected in the aquatic environment and are of emerging concern due to their adverse effect and potential of inducing antibiotic resistance. In this study, we developed an UV/pre-magnetized Fe0 /H2 O2 process (UV/pre-Fe0 /H2 O2 ) valid for neutral pH conditions, which could remove sulfamethazine (SMT) completely within only 30 min and enhance 1.8 times of SMT removal. Meanwhile, this process demonstrated outstanding mineralization capability with the TOC removal of 92.1%, while for UV/H2 O2 and UV/Fe0 /H2 O2 system it was 53.9% and 72.1%, respectively. Better synergetic effect between UV irradiation and pre-Fe0 /H2 O2 system was observed, and the value of synergetic factor was 6.3 in the presence of both ions and humic acid, which was much higher than that in deionized water (4.4), humic acid (5.5) and ions (1.5). Moreover, the process could efficiently remove various antibiotics (800 μg L-1 oxytetracycline (OTC); 800 μg L-1 tetracycline (TC); 400 μg L-1 sulfadiazine (SD) and 400 μg L-1 SMT) in the secondary wastewater effluent. After optimization of Fe0 and H2 O2 dosage, these antibiotics could be removed within 10 min (kapp (103 ) = 288.6 min-1 ) with a very low treatment cost of 0.1 USD m-3 , and the EE/O value was only 1.22 kWh m-3 . Compared with O3 , UV/Fe2+ /PDS, VUV/UV/Fe2+ and other US-based processes, the degradation rates by this process could enhance as high as 22.3 folds while the treatment cost or EE/O value could reduce greatly. Therefore, UV/pre-Fe0 /H2 O2 process is promising and cost-effective for the treatment of antibiotics in secondary wastewater effluents.