Enhanced Removal of Antibiotic Sulfachloropyridazine in Water Using Sodium Percarbonate Activated by Ozone: Mechanism, Degradation Pathway, and Toxicity Assessment

Antibiotics have become an integral part of human life and production. The presence of sulfachloropyridazine (SCP), one of the most ubiquitous antibiotics, in water has been a growing concern owing to its long persistence and the difficulty in removing it by conventional water treatment processes. This study introduced ozone (O₃)-activated sodium percarbonate (SPC) as an innovative technique of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), and the degradation of SCP from water by this method was thoroughly investigated. The impact of a variety of parameters, such as the dosage of SPC, the dosage of O₃, the pH value, and water matrix constituents, on the removal of SCP was evaluated with regard to the pseudo-first-order kinetic model. It was found that the removal effectiveness of SCP improved initially and then decreased with the rising dosage of SPC, with an optimal SPC dose achieved at 20 mg/L. Moreover, •OH, <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><msubsup><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">O</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow><mrow><mo>•</mo><mo>−</mo></mrow></msubsup></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> and ¹O₂ played important roles during SCP degradation based on radical quenching tests and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) tests. The SCP degradation pathways were predicted using density functional theory (DFT), which primarily involves the cleavage of S-C or S-N bonds and Smiles-type rearrangements, accompanied by hydroxylation. Furthermore, the toxicity of degradation intermediates was evaluated by the ECOSAR 1.1 software in terms of acute toxicity and chronic toxicity, and most of them exhibited lower levels of toxicity. The results can expand the research scope of SPC and reveal significant insights for SPC’s application in controlling antibiotic contamination.