performance evaluation of the photo-fenton process in the removal of vancomycin antibiotic from aqueous solutions and assessment of the impact of influential parameters on the process

The present study aimed to investigate the efficiency of the photo-fenton process in removing the antibiotic vancomycin from an aqueous solution and assessing the influence of effective parameters. in this study, degradation of the antibiotic vancomycin under uv-c lamp irradiation with a power of 24 watts (wavelength range 100-280 nm) was investigated under various conditions. factors such as ph (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10), vancomycin concentration ( 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 mg/l), hydrogen peroxide concentration ( 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 mg/l), iron sulfate concentration (20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 mg/l), and contact time ( 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 min) at a stirring speed of 250 rpm were examined using the photo-fenton process uv (h2o2/fe2+). to optimize these conditions, the response surface methodology (rsm) with a central composite design (ccd) was employed to design the experiments, analyze the results, and optimize the process across five levels: -α, -1, 0, +1, and +α. under optimal conditions, the removal efficiency of vancomycin reached 91.26% after 75 min. the optimal parameters were determined as follows: initial vancomycin concentration of 20 mg/l, hydrogen peroxide concentration of 50 mg/l (equivalent to 1.47 m/mol), iron sulfate concentration of 50 mg/l (equivalent to 0.174 m/mol), and ph of 4. the regression coefficient r² of 0.9743 indicates that the removal of vancomycin can be well described by the model. analysis of variance, (an, ova) confirmed the adequacy of the selected quadratic model for vancomycin removal. in this study, the predicted values (pred.r2 = 0.7474) and the actual values obtained (adj.r² = 0.7567) are close. real sample analysis showed an 85% removal efficiency for vancomycin. the results of the present study showed that the photo-fenton process uv (h2o2/fe2+) has a high efficiency in removing vancomycin and other antibiotics from aqueous solutions.