Solar-driven hybrid photo-Fenton degradation of persistent antibiotic ciprofloxacin by zinc ferrite-titania heterostructures: degradation pathway, intermediates, and toxicity analysis

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 30; no. 14; pp. 39605 - 39617
• Main Authors: John, Sangeeth, Rathinavelu, Sasikaladevi, Mary, Sagayanathan Monica Susai, Nambi, Indumathi Manivannan, Babu, Sridharan Moorthy, Thomas, Tiju, Singh, Shubra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-03-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anti-Bacterial Agents; Antibiotics; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Catalysis; Chromatography, Liquid; Ciprofloxacin; Contaminants; Degradation; E coli; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental science; Escherichia coli; Heterostructures; Hydrogen Peroxide; Intermediates; Mineralization; Oxidation; Oxidation process; Pharmaceutical Preparations; Phenols; Photocatalysis; Photodegradation; Propanol; Research Article; Solar simulators; Substitution reactions; Tandem Mass Spectrometry; Titanium dioxide; Toxicity; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Zinc; Zinc ferrites; Photo-Fenton; Ciprofloxacin; Toxicity; Photocatalysis; Hybrid advanced oxidation process
• ISSN: 1614-7499; 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-24926-1

Present work puts forward an efficient strategy to degrade one of the persistent antibiotic contaminants, ciprofloxacin (CIP). Hybrid advanced oxidation process (HAOP) is tailored with a synergy effect between photocatalysis and photo-Fenton catalysis on zinc ferrite-titania heterostructured composite (ZFO-TiO
2
). The ZFO-TiO
2
heterostructured composite enables heterogenous surfaces for enhanced charge separation where HAOP is implemented for CIP degradation with the aid of class AAA solar simulator. The results reveal an enhanced degradation rate of CIP (
k
obs
 = 0.255 min
−1
), noticeably higher than the conventional TiO
2
-based photocatalysis. The HAOP system strongly enhances the reaction rates showing five times higher performance as compared to TiO
2
-based photocatalysis. The substitution reactions for degradation of CIP into its intermediates were analyzed by LC–MS/MS, and the plausible degradation pathways have been graphically modeled identifying 3-phenyl-1-propanol and phenol molecules as less toxic end products. Toxicity of the photodegraded samples reveal 18.1 ± 1.24% inhibition of
V. fischeri
at the end of 60-min treatment indicating reduced toxicity of CIP contaminated samples. Antimicrobial inhibition studies on
E. coli
also corroborate an effective CIP removal (~ 100%) in less than 90 min. The study puts forward a novel ZFO-TiO
2
composite HAOP system for efficient and rapid mineralization of an antibiotic pollutant, extendable towards wide range of pharmaceutical drug degradation studies.