Raffaella Palmisano, Luigi Campanella and Barbara Ambrosetti
Current research aims to conserve natural resources, especially water. Our study focuses on developing water purification to remove contaminating antibiotics using heterogeneous photo-catalysis. We compare photolysis with and without TiO2 catalysis, testing the photo-stability of four representative antibiotics: Amoxicillin, streptomycin, erythromycin and ciprofloxacin by HPLC using a Perkin Elmer 2000 chromatograph, BIO-RAD Bio-sil ODS-5S L 250 mm × 4 mm ID C18 reversed phase column and Perkin Elmer LC-90 UV detector. Both obeyed first order reaction kinetics, usually following the Lagmuir-Hinshelwood model. A respirometric biosensor was employed to assess the toxicity of drug solutions and photo-degradation products. We demonstrate that catalysis consistently decreases toxicity more effectively in all cases. The photo-degradation of ciprofloxacin and amoxicillin took longer.
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Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry received 1781 citations as per Google Scholar report
