Application of electro-activated persulfate oxidation enhanced with an ultraviolet process in a multi-stage flow-through filtration system for antibiotics abatement

The treatment of antibiotic wastewater from various water matrices remains challenging because of some complex pollutants in nature. Single treatment methods are often inadequate for eliminating these contaminants. The integrated technology is brilliantly effective over an individual process alone. The electro-activated persulfate oxidation enhanced with an ultraviolet process (EO/PS/UV) was established as a novel technology in antibiotic wastewater treatment. It exhibited to be highly effective with much more efficiency in degrading amoxicillin (AMX) (97.10 %) than the two couple and individual processes in a multi-stage flow-through reactor. The Box-Behnken design's quadratic model using the response surface methodology (RSM) revealed a reasonable prediction with a suggestive correlation of R-2 = 0.9986. This study shows that the AMX degradation mechanism in the EO/PS/UV process involves coordinating of SO4-, and center dot OH, with center dot OH playing a more significant role. It could effectively treat the tetracycline and sulfamethoxazole within 40 min in both simulated wastewater and secondary effluent, except for tetracycline, which took only 30 min in simulated wastewater. However, AMX did not undergo sufficient removal within 100 min and required a higher EE/O compared to other pollutants. Lastly, the integrated technology has proven to be an efficient and energy-saving method for eliminating antibiotics with promising standpoints for various wastewater treatments.