PHOTOCATALYTIC DEGRADATION OF FENITROTHION IN WATER WITH TiO2 UNDER SOLAR IRRADIATION

Abstract

Fenitrothion is widely used as herbicide with strong estrogenic activity, and it can lead to abnormalities of the thyroid gland and can give mutations. Hence, their degradation treatment is necessary for the environment. The photocatalytic remediation under sunlight irradiation is very effective for the degradation of fenitrothion. Fenitrothion is completely degraded during 10 min under the optimized conditions. The influence of various conditions, such as irradiation time, sunlight intensity, pH, temperature, TiO2 loading amount and initial substrate concentration, is investigated on the degradation of fenitrothion. The photocatalytic degradation mechanisms are speculated, from the experimental results with molecular orbital (MO) simulation for frontier electron density. The primary photocatalytic degradation reaction keeps a pseudo first order kinetic law. The activation energy (Ea) and half-life (t1/2) are 20.6 kJ/mol and 1.4 min, respectively. The fenitrothion wastewater photocatalytic treatment may become a good technique under solar irradiation.