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International Conference on

Recent Trends in Environmental Sustainability

ESCON22/NMsB/43
Comparative electrochemical abatement of Sulfasalazine using active/non-active anode
system: Process kinetics and energy consumption

Sajjad Hussain1*, Saqib Mujtaba1, Hammad Khan1, Javaid Rabbani Khan1, Saima Gul2
1Faculty of Materials and Chemical Engineering, GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and
Technology, Topi, Swabi, KP
2Department of Chemistry, Islamia College Peshawar, Post Box 25120, Pakistan

Correspondence: sajjad.hussain@giki.edu.pk

Abstract

Every year, about 23,000 tons of antibiotics are used for a variety of reasons and resulting in
large quantities of antibiotics entering the aquatic environment that haven't been digested in
the living body. The wastewater containing these antibiotics are treated using physical
techniques, chemical oxidation includes, and advanced oxidation processes (AOP). The
electrochemical oxidation technologies present an alternate solution to decontaminate
wastewater containing these pharmaceuticals because electrons are a versatile, efficient, cost-
effective, easy-to-automate, and clean reagent. This study involves the use of electrochemical
oxidation processes to remove antibiotic Sulfasalazine from aqueous solution using “Niobium
supported boron doped diamond anode (Nb /BDD)”and “DSA (Ti/RuO0.3TiO0.7O2)”. The
influence of different operational parameters such as supporting electrolyte, electrolyte
concentration, applied current density, pH and of initial concentration of SSZ were investigated
in both electrochemical systems. The optimum operating parameters were found for the
electrochemical degradation of SSZ in aqueous solution. The optimum operating conditions
for SSZ removal using DSA electrode were current density 20mA/cm2,pH 3, electrolyte
concentration 0.15M of NaNO3 and Na2SO4 and 0.07 M of NaCl but in case of BDD anode
the optimum conditions were current density 20mA/Cm2, pH 7 and electrolyte concentration
0.15M of NaNO3 and NaCl and 0.1M of Na2SO4 for 60 min of electrolysis at constant SSZ
concentration of 100 ppm. Moreover, both the electrodes were also compared on the basis of
degradation efficiency and operating parameters, and it was concluded that BDD showed
greater performance than DSA. The kinetic study was also studied for the degradation process,
and it was noted that pseudo first order kinetics was followed by the degradation process using
both electrodes.

Department of Environmental Sciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Vehari Campus

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