(670c) Hydrothermal Degradation of Emerging Pollutants from Water

The concentration of emerging pollutants (e.g., hormone, antibiotic) in river water has become an alarming scenario in the United States in last few year. As the half lives of those pollutants are long, runoff of those substance in river water is an unavoidable phenomenon. Hormones are biologically active at very low levels and may disrupt the reproductive endocrinology of fish, while antibiotics facilitates the development and proliferation of antibiotic resistance bacteria (ARB). So, reduction of their concentration in river water is must needed expectation.

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) a thermochemical process, where biomass is treated at high-temperature with auto generated high-pressure (mainly water vapor pressure). It is a promising conversion technology that can convert biomass into different value added products. As most pharmaceutical products are vulnerable at high temperature and pressure, HTC technology could break down the emerging pollutants.

The objective of this study was to investigate the degradation phenomenon of emerging pollutants with HTC temperature, residence time, and initial chemical states (acidic or basic). A series of HTC experiments were conducted at different temperatures between 220 and 300 °C, two different residence time of 0.5 hour and 6 hours, and different acidic or basic conditions between pH 3 to 10 by using two model compounds (oxytetracycline and β-estradiol). HPLC and GC-MS were used to analysis the non-degraded amount of hormone/antibiotic in the sample and the generated product due to their degradations, respectively. The analysis showed that the concentration of hormone and antibiotic reduced significantly at low HTC temperature in presence of highly acidic or basic environment.