Ciprofloxacin removal as an emerging contaminant using electrochemical advanced reduction process: Mechanism, degradation pathway and reaction kinetic

The introduction of emerging contaminants (ECs), particularly antibiotics to the water resources has grown in recent years. Due to its widespread application and their toxicity, the ECs are one of the major environmental concerns. The present study is to evaluate the electrochemical removal of ciprofloxacin (CIP) as an emerging contaminant through the advanced reduction process (ARP). Moreover, the degradation pathway, mechanism and its kinetics have provided. In this study, the impacts of main operating variables were evaluated including pH, current density, initial pollutant concentration, sodium sulfite (Na₂SO₃) concentration, and time on the CIP removal through electrochemical process based-ARP. The obtained results revealed the 94.15 % CIP degradation rate under optimal conditions, at the concentration of 20 mg/L and pH 5 during 60 min. The CIP reduction followed the first-order kinetics with the rate of 0.99. In addition, the ARP along with electrochemical systems as a novel process were suggested as suitable and high efficiency technique for the CIP removal.