Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the degradation of ciprofloxacin (CIP) from its aqueous solutions via different advanced oxidation processes (AOP). The effects of persulfate (PS) concentration, pH, zinc oxide nanopartides (ZnO-NPs) dose, initial CIP concentration, and reaction time on the degradation of CIP were studied. It was found that the sonochemical (US) degradation is a less efficient process (with removal efficiency of 36) compared to the sono-nano-chemical (US/ZnO) process which resulted in removal efficiency of 70. Maximum removal of 99 was obtained using the sono-nano-chemicaVPS (US/ZnO/PS) process at a frequency of 60 kHz, time of 10 min, pH of 7, initial CIP concentration of 25 mg/L, and PS concentration of 476.06 mg/L. The addition of PS and ZnO-NPs to the process enhanced the rate of US degradation of CIP. In addition, the kinetic parameters for the US/ZnO/PS process were obtained by fitting the kinetic data into the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The kinetic data was found to fit into the pseudo-first-order kinetic model than the pseudo-second-order model. The results showed that the AOP using US/ZnO/PS is a promising technique for the treatment of ciprofloxacin containing solutions.