removal of herbicide mecoprop from surface water using advanced oxidation processes (aops)

in the last twenty years, due to a number of natural and anthropogenic reasons, many water sources have become poorer in quality with respect to micropollutants. an example of a micropollutant that needs to be removed is the chlorophenoxypropionic herbicide mecoprop (mcpp). mcpp is one of the nine pesticides used as an indicator to monitor pesticide concentrations in rivers because it is frequently found to exceed the 0.1 µg l-1 limit in england and wales. the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of different aops for the degradation of the herbicide mecoprop (mcpp) in both deionised water (dw) and in surface water using different uv254 intensities and concentrations of reagents. for an initial mcpp concentration of 10 mg l-1, photo-fenton at natural ph using 20 mg l-1 of h2o2 and 20 mg l-1 fe2+ proved to be the most effective process in terms of degradation rate in both dw and surface water. when using an environmentally relevant concentration (1 µg l-1) and natural ph, if optimized, photo-fenton and uv/h2o2 processes achieved the best degradation results.