Degradation Of Triclocarban In Water By Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Combined With TiO₂/activated Carbon Fibers

As a broad-spectrum and efficient antibacterial agent,triclocarban（TCC）had been added into in a large number of medicines and personal-hygiene products（e.g.,soaps,deodorants and toothpaste）.However,TCC was hard to be naturally degraded and had inhibiting effect to microbes,which led to an increasing concentration of TCC in natural water and an enormous risk to aquatic environment and human health.Dielectric barrier discharge plasma（DBD）technology was regarded as a powerful advanced oxidation technology for the environment governance,this research was tried to bring the titanium dioxide/activated carbon fibres（TiO₂/ACFs）composite material into the DBD for the removal of TCC in water.In this study,the sol-gel method was introduced to prepare the TiO₂/ACFs composite material.A series of material characterization methods（e.g.,XRD,BET,SEM,XRF and XPS）had been introduced to analyze the morphology,composition and characterization features of the prepared TiO₂/ACFs.The result indicated that the prepared TiO₂/ACFs had good characterizations of photocatalyst and surface features.The removal of triclocarban（TCC）in water by DBD assisted with TiO₂/ACFs was investigated in this paper,and this research studied the effects of TCC initial concentration,discharge power and catalyst content to the TCC removal rate and energy efficiency.The recycle ability of TiO₂/ACFs was also evaluated.The result showed that DBD/TiO₂/ACFs cooperative system could markedly improve the removal rate of TCC in aquatic environment.The removal rate of TCC（100ML）reached 93%after 30min treatment in following conditions:discharge power was 38W,initial concentration was 10 mg/L,the radius of TiO₂/ACFs felt was 3 cm,the carrier gas was air,which was 30%higher than the TCC removal rate without TiO₂/ACFs.Moreover,higher initial concentration,bigger discharge power and more catalyst could all improve the removal rate of TCC and energy efficiency during the degradation process,TiO₂/ACFs kept stable catalysis and excellent recycle ability.The mechanism and probable degradation pathway of TCC removal in DBD/TiO₂/ACFs cooperative system were investigated in this study by controlling the carrier gases（air,oxygen,nitrogen and argon）and adding different free-radical scavengers（iso propanol,EDTA and CCl4）,the results indicated that hydroxyl radical（·OH）played a key role during the removal process.Meanwhile,four degradation pathways were derived by combined quantum computing data with degradation products.Moreover,the acute toxicity of TCC solution during the removal process was studied by using the fluorescent bacteria,and the result implied the adding of TiO₂/ACFs into DBD could efficiently reduce the acute toxicity of degraded TCC solution.This research provided a theory and technology for TCC removal in water.