Electrochemical Degradation of Pharmaceutical Compounds as Tetracycline in Aqueous Solution with BDD Electrode

Abstract

Antibiotics named tetracycline (TC) are the most popular group of pharmaceutical compounds used in therapeutic purpose in human and veterinary medicine and in aquaculture, due to their characteristics as broad spectrum antibiotic. The tetracyclines are a group of natural and semisynthetic products that are bacteriostatic agents with activity against a wide variety of organisms, but of limited use today because of acquired resistance. Even at low concentrations, tetracycline and its metabolites may have a negative influence on the environment. Tetracycline is weakly metabolized or absorbed into the body, some of the ingested antibiotic being eliminated through urine and feces directly into the environment as most of the primarily unchanged form or secondary compounds. Nowadays tetracycline residues can be detected in surface water that was discharged from municipal wastewater treatment plants and agricultural drained. In this study, the degradation of tetracycline and the influence of experimental parameters (initial pH, initial concentration, different flow velocity (mL/s), solution temperature (°C), current intensity (mA)) on electrochemical degradation with BDD electrode were evaluated. The following parameters were analyzed for the samples collected during the electrochemical assays in electrochemical cell with stirrier and BDD/stainless steel electrodes: Chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon, nitrogen (total Kjeldhal, organic and inorganic), HPLC and UV-Visible absorption spectrophotometry.