title: Degradation of pharmaceutical compounds in water by non-thermal plasma treatment.
abstract: Pharmaceutical compounds became an important class of water pollutants due to their increasing consumption over the last years, as well as due to their persistence in the environment. Since conventional waste water treatment plants are unable to remove certain non-biodegradable pharmaceuticals, advanced oxidation processes was extensively studied for this purpose. Among them, non-thermal plasma was also recently investigated and promising results were obtained. This work reviews the recent research on the oxidative degradation of pharmaceuticals using non-thermal plasma in contact with liquid. As target compounds, several drugs belonging to different therapeutic groups were selected: antibiotics, anticonvulsants, anxiolytics, lipid regulators, vasodilatators, contrast media, antihypertensives and analgesics. It was found that these compounds were removed from water relatively fast, partly degraded, and partly even mineralized. In order to ensure the effluent is environmentally safe it is important to identify the degradation intermediates and to follow their evolution during treatment, which requires complex chemical analysis of the solutions. Based on this analysis, degradation pathways of the investigated pharmaceuticals under plasma conditions were suggested. After sufficient plasma treatment the final organic by-products present in the solutions were mainly small molecules in an advanced oxidation state.
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Department of Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion, Atomistilor Str. 409, P.O. Box MG-36, 077125 Magurele-Bucharest, Romania. Electronic address: monimag@infim.ro.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Magureanu
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Department of Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion, Atomistilor Str. 409, P.O. Box MG-36, 077125 Magurele-Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Nicolae Bogdan
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Mandache
authors.affiliation: University of Bucharest, Faculty of Chemistry, Department of Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry and Catalysis, Bd. Regina Elisabeta 4-12, 030016 Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Vasile I
authors.initials: VI
authors.lastname: Parvulescu
mesh_terms: D003287:Contrast Media / Q000737:chemistry*; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000737:chemistry*; D058626:Plasma Gases; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid / Q000379:methods*; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D058626:Plasma Gases; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Advanced oxidation processes; Degradation; Non-thermal plasma; Pharmaceutical compounds; Water treatment