Treatment of pharmaceutical effluent by ultrasound coupled with dual oxidant system

In this study, sonolysis (US), a dual oxidant system (DOX), and ultrasound coupled with a dual oxidant system (US/DOX) were employed to degrade real pharmaceutical effluent. In a DOX system, two effective oxidizing agents such as hydrogen peroxide and activated persulphate were used simultaneously. In this work, for the first time, an easily available waste material, iron swarf, was used as an activator for persulphate oxidation. Iron swarf coupled with an ultrasound system showed better activation. High iron dosage, acidic pH and high temperature favoured degradation with both DOX and US/DOX. Sequential addition of iron swarf produced better results compared to single-step addition. The activation energy was found to be 47.25 and 23.47 kJ/mol for DOX and US/DOX, respectively. The biodegradability index of the effluent was enhanced from 0.13 to 0.81 after treatment with US/DOX.