Degradation of Antibiotics in Wastewater during Sonolysis, Ozonation, and Their Simultaneous Application: Operating Conditions Effects and Processes Evaluation

Pharmaceutical drugs frequently found in treated effluents, lakes and rivers, can exhibit adverse effects on aquatic organisms. The present study focuses on the application of advanced oxidation processes as ozonation (O-3), sonolysis (US), and their combined application (US+O-3) for the degradation of diclofenac in wastewater. Under the applied conditions, all three systems proved to be able to induce diclofenac oxidation, leading to 22% of mineralization for O-3 and 36% for US process after 40 min of treatment. The synergy observed in the combined schemes, mainly due to the effects of US in enhancing the O-3 decomposition, led to a higher mineralization (about 40%) for 40-minute treatment and to a significantly higher mineralization level for shorter treatment duration.