Estudo da degradação do fármaco norfloxacino pela reação de foto-fenton

Abstract

In recent years several problems are being highlighted in society due to the presence of micropollutants in sewage, surface water, groundwater and, what is more worrisome, in waters for human consumption. Among the several compounds identified, drugs stand out because they resist decomposition and can cause serious risks to the human species, as well as to the ecosystem. Conventional treatments are often not efficient in their removal, so several strategies of water and effluent treatment studies have been studied. One of them refers to the so-called advanced oxidative processes (POAs), this being an alternative strategy for the treatment, observing a great efficiency in the removal of several varieties of compounds called emerging contaminants. Among these processes, we have the Fenton and Photo-Fenton reactions, which have been widely used, mainly due to the reaction to generate hydroxyl radicals (OH∙), this radical being the main oxidizing agent responsible for the degradation of the compounds. In this context, the objective of this work was to study the application of POAs in the degradation of the norfloxacin drug by the Photo-Fenton reaction. The factors such as Fe2+ concentration and H2O2 concentration were optimized by performing a factorial design and evaluated at two levels with a central point, maintaining the pH at 2.88 and temperature at 25 °C. Therefore, the study of the degradation of norfloxacin founded that after 20 minutes of the experiment, the highest percentage of drug degradation was with 82.1%, and it was noticeable that there was no significant difference between the effects of the factors in the degradation and that the ideal would be to use the lowest conditions of these factors, being these with 3,84 x 10-3 mol L-1 of Fe2+ and 5,38 x 10-2 mol L-1 of H2O2 at a pH of 2.88 and at 25 °C.