Abstract
Herein, we show the first report on the degradation of hazardous organic pollutants in very saline matrice (seawater) using acetone photoactivated process at 253.7 nm. Chloral black (CB), a very persistent dye of well-established carcinogenic and mutagenic effects, was chosen a substrate model. The photodegradation of CB was monotonically increased in the presence of acetone. About 90% of CB (25.5 mu M) was removed after 30 minutes in the presence of 50 mM of acetone whereas only 30% of removal was achieved under UV alone. The process is very sensitive to operational conditions. Chemical probes' tests using oxygen and KI have evidenced that methyl radical (CH3BLACK CIRCLE) is the primarily radical involved in the CB degradation upon UV/acetone treatment. The formation of CH3BLACK CIRCLE is thermodynamically favourable since the energy per Einstein of 253.7 nm light (similar to 113 kcal) is large enough to break the C-C bond in the acetone molecule (70 kcal).