Electrochemical abatement of atrazine solutions using an undivided stirred tank cell with pt or BDD anode

Abstract

Nowadays, the increasing pollution of natural water effluents with herbicides, such as atrazine (ATZ, 2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine), is an emerging problem that has not received the sufficient attention. This work presents a study on ATZ degradation under an electrochemical advanced oxidation process (EAOP), such as anodic oxidation (AO). The degradation of 175 mL of 10 and 40 mg L-1 ATZ solutions was studied using Pt or BDD as anode. The assays were made with a stirred tank cell, using a supporting electrolyte of 0.050 mM of Na2SO4 at pH 3.0 by applying 0.18, 0.27 and 0.37 A cm-2. The degradation rate increased by increasing current density, regardless of the anode employed. Greater amounts of ATZ were removed at higher organic load. The pesticide decay always obeyed a pseudo-first-order kinetics. A high degradation efficiency of 97%-99% was obtained by the more powerful AO-BDD process at 0.37 A cm-2. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to follow the evolution of major oxidation products by AO-BDD, such as desethyl atrazine, desethyl desisopropyl atrazine and cyanuric acid.