Photocatalytic treatment of metronidazole-containing wastewater

Abstract The presence of antibiotics in wastewater is risky for the environment as conventional treatment plants are not always capable removing them completely. Therefore, may enter water bodies and affect health aquatic living organisms. In this work, effluent after continuous flow activated sludge process was collected analyzed. average total organic carbon (TOC) metronidazole (MNZ) concentrations were 43 ± 13.1 mg/L 5.3 0.2 mg/L, respectively. catalytic activities TiO, TiO 2 , Bi O 3 WO tested under visible light (VIS, 500 nm) near-visible ultraviolet (UV, 365 irradiations. structure properties catalysts have been verified using SEM-EDX Mastersizer 3000. 25% MNZ degraded VIS only 150 min. Even though all four able to degrade some extent (28-33%) min irradiation, they mineralize compounds wastewater. On other hand, application UV alone with resulted complete degradation MNZ. Moreover, UV/TiO2 achieved 52% TOC removal experiment.