Performance of advanced oxidation process (UV/O3/H2O2) degrading amoxicillin wastewater: A comparative study

The degradation of synthetic amoxicillin wastewater (SAW) treated with advanced oxidation process (AOP) including UV/O3/H2O2 was investigated in the present study. In order to investigate the impacts of effective factors on the process performance, four variables involving two numerical factors, initial H2O2 concentration, and initial pH, and two categorical factors, ozonation and UV irradiation, were selected. Enhancement of ozonation processes by the addition of H2O2 and different initial pH was also evaluated. The process was modeled and analyzed using response surface methodology (RSM). The region of exploration for the process was taken as the area enclosed by initial H2O2 concentration (0-20 mM) and initial pH (3-11) boundaries. For two categorical factors (ozonation and UV irradiation), the experiments were performed at two levels (with and without application of each factor). Ozone was the most effective factor with a direct effect on the response in this research. The variables had a synergistic impact on the response. Maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency was obtained at H2O2 concentration 20 mM at initial pH 11. As a result, O3/ H2O2 system at pH 5 showed better performance in terms of BOD5/COD ratio (0.40). From the HPLC chromatograms, complete degradation of amoxicillin (AMX) was achieved. The O3/H2O2 process showed to be more effective in comparison with UV/H2O2 system.