Heterogeneous photodegradation of Pyrimethanil and its commercial formulation with TiO2 immobilized on SiC foams

Vine is one of the crops undergoing the most pesticide treatment. Due to the presence of pesticides residues in water and food, and the negative effects on human and wildlife health, it is necessary to develop an effective treatment. Photocatalytic oxidation using semiconductors is one of the advanced oxidation processes for degradation of organic pollutants in water and air. A TiO2 in nanopowder is an excellent photocatalyst that can mineralize a large range of organic pollutants such as pesticides and dyes. In order to eliminate the problems due to TiO2 nanoparticles, we have successfully supported TiO2 on B-SiC foams. The supporting material has been used to degrade Pyrimethanil molecule and its commercial formulation: Scala a fungicide produced by BASF Company. After 4 h of treatment in our conditions, a 88% and 74% of Pyrimethanil and Scala was removed with a 58 and 47% of mineralization, respectively. These results are very encouraging because there is no need to filter to separate the catalyst from the treated water which is very important for a large-scale use of this process.