Degradation of the cytostatic drug bicalutamide by photo-assisted catalytic wet peroxide oxidation

The presence of cytostatic drugs, such as bicalutamide (BICA), in aquatic compartments reveals the necessity of developing efficient processes for their elimination in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). This work explores for the first time the use of natural magnetite as a low-cost catalyst in the photo assisted - catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (UV-CWPO) of BICA. For this purpose, real WWTP secondary effluents were spiked with 100 mu g/L BICA and subjected to UV-CWPO. Preliminary runs comparing UV photolysis, UV/H2O2, CWPO and UV-CWPO confirmed the synergistic effect of UV radiation and the CWPO process employing magnetite. Afterwards, a parametric study was performed evaluating the influence of the pH, catalyst load, H2O2 dosage, temperature and water matrix. Under optimum operating conditions (pH 0: 6, [magnetite]: 375 mg/L and [H2O2]: 75 mg/L), 99.7 % BICA degradation and 60.7 % mineralization were reached after 30 min in WWTP effluent. UV-CWPO also proved to be effective in hospital wastewater. Catalyst activity was studied in 5 consecutive runs, showing great stability for both BICA removal and TOC elimination. Finally, phytotoxicity tests revealed a lower toxicity in the UV-CWPO effluent compared to the untreated stream. Hence, UV-CWPO proved to be a feasible to eliminate risky cytostatic drugs in relevant environmental matrices.