Photodegradation Of Nonylphenol And Its Ethoxylates And Their Occurrence In Receiving Water Media

Endocrine disruptors are a serious environmental concern because of their negative effect on aquatic life. Nonylphenol and its ethoxylates constitute a large part of these environmental toxic chemical. Since they have been found in the effluent of waste water treatment plant and aquatic environment, it becomes important to focus on their degradation process. This research work has been conducted in this way. It was important to firstly determine the best conditions Nonylphenol and its ethoxylates detection by using HPLC and GC-MS. The HPLC detection was better when Wavelength was at277nm, Column temperature at40℃, Mobile phase was2-Isopropanol and Flow rate at0.1ml/min. GC-MS detection also better when DCM was used as NPEO solvent. It was secondly necessary to determine the concentration of these pollutants in water media. Samples were collected from surface and groundwater in Taiyuan city of Shanxi province. Concentrations of NP and total NPEOs in surface water ranged from80.1to932.83μg/L and157.13to2080.76μg/L respectively. Groundwater concentrations are ranged from24.64to151.33μg/L and from87.24to703.88μg/L respectively for NP and total NPEOs. It was finally imperative to set up a degradation process which could remove these pollutants from water. H2O2was retained as the best catalyst for this experimentation. Following conditions were determined as optimal for nonylphenol removal:pH1, H2O2concentration of40mg/L, and an initial nonylphenol concentration of15mg/L. Under these conditions, the removal nonylphenol reached about80%after2hours of irradiation. Identification of degradation products was done by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and analyses revealed Benzaldehyde,4-methoxy and Diisobutyl phthalate as the main products of nonylphenol photodegradation.