Solar photodegradation of carbamazepine from aqueous solutions using a compound parabolic concentrator equipped with a sun tracking system

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the efficiency of a Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) equipped with a sun tracking system in the photolysis of carbamazepine as a refractory organic compound. The natural sunlight experiments were accomplished during the period May-July 2017 in Tehran, Iran. The intermediate by-products of the process of solar photodegradation of carbamazepine (CBZ) were characterized using LC-MS. The results showed that increasing the reactor temperature did not significantly change CBZ degradation efficiency. However, the solution pH played a comparatively important role in CBZ solar photo degradation: removal efficiency increased considerably with pH from about 49% at pH 7 to almost 61% at pH 9. According to our findings, using a CPC reactor equipped with a sun tracker system promotes the solar photo-transformation rate of CBZ by 2-3 fold. In addition, LC/MS analysis showed that eight main intermediates were formed in the treated solution after solar photodegradation of CBZ. Therefore, complete mineralization of CBZ was not accomplished.