Oxidative degradation of gentamicin present in water by an electro-Fenton process and biodegradability improvement

In the context of environmental protection, where there is a need to develop effective operations for carrying out appropriate treatment of polluted water by pharmaceuticals. Therefore, the present study aims at evaluating the degradation for gentamicin through electro-Fenton (EF) operation, through taking into consideration the effect of several parameters of experimental in the process, namely, the concentration of initial gentamicin, the applied current and the Fe+2 (II) quantities. The (EF) operation employed involves a carbon-felt as cathode and platinum as anode at pH 3. Studies for the gentamicin kinetics is monitored by HPLC giving a pseudo-first order reaction following by a chemical oxygen demand, with a reached degree of mineralization 96% after of four hours of treatment through current 100 mA/cm(2) with 0.1 mM of Fe+2. We find that the degradation for molecule of gentamicin is accompanied by an augmentation of the biodegradability, assesse through the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5) on chemical oxygen demand (COD) ratio, that augmentation from 0 to 0.41 before treatment after 30 min for EF treatment, showing that there is potential for conjugation of the EF process and the biological process. Furthermore, the by-products have been identified on the basis of HPLC-MS/MS results.