Sunlight photodegradation of micropollutants in wastewater effluent

The photodegradation of seven micropollutants was studied to obtain the degradation kinetic data to enable development of a fugacity model to predict their removal from a wastewater treatment plant. Sunlight photolysis experiments indicated that sulfamethoxazole and triclosan were susceptible to sunlight exposure in a pure water matrix, whereas caffeine, carbamazepine, simazine, diuron and 2,4-D were not although marked breakdown was observed for these compounds in the wastewater matrix. Hydroxyl radicals were shown to play an important role in the degradation of these five compounds, accounting for 40-60% of the overall removal.