Degradation of the antibiotic chloramphenicol using photolysis and advanced oxidation process with UVC and solar radiation

In this work, an aqueous solution of the antibiotic chloramphenicol was treated by photolysis and an advanced oxidation process using hydrogen peroxide combined with UVC and solar radiation. In this system, a reactor containing three UVC lamps (30 W) was used. A factorial plan 22 was designed with the following variables: time and a concentration of hydrogen peroxide and evaluated using the percentage of chloramphenicol degradation as the response. Twelve hours of exhibition to UVC and solar radiation obtained 83 and 21% of chloramphenicol degradation, respectively. When H2O2/UV was used, 98 and 5% of degradation were obtained after one and a half hours of exhibition to UVC and solar radiation with 3 mmol L−1 of hydrogen peroxide. The time-based kinetic constant was calculated as 6.3 × 10−2 min−1 with r2 equal to 0.9878.