Doxycycline degradation by the oxidative Fenton process

Doxycycline is a broad-spectrum tetracycline occurring in domestic,industrial,and rural effluents,whose main drawback is the increasing emergence of resistant bacteria. this antibiotic could be degraded by the so-called fenton process,consisting in the oxidation of organic pollutants by oxygen peroxide (h in the presence of fe2+. experiments were performed according to an experimental rotational central composite design to investigate the influence of temperature (0-40.0°c),hconcentration (100-900 mg/l),and fe2+ concentration (5-120 mg/l) on residual doxycycline and total organic carbon concentrations. whereas the final residual doxycycline concentration ranged from 0 to 55.8 mg/l,the oxidation process proved unable to reduce the total organic carbon by more than 30%. the best operating conditions were concentrations of hand fe2+ of 611 and 25 mg/l,respectively,and temperature of 35.0°c,but the analysis of variance revealed that only the first variable exerted a statistically significant effect on the residual doxycycline concentration. these results suggest possible application of this process in the treatment of doxycycline-containing effluents and may be used as starting basis to treat tetracycline-contaminated effluents. © 2015 alexandre a. borghi et al.