Abstract
Azinphos-methyl and chlorpyrifos are the organophosphorous pesticides which pose serious threats to the environment including their detrimental effect on humans and, therefore, their removal from the environment is a must. Hence, in the present paper the ultrasound technique was applied to remove the above-mentioned hazardous compounds. For this, the effect of influential parameters such as pH, initial pesticide concentration, frequency, electric power and treatment time on the ultrasound degradation of azinphos-methyl and chlorpyrifos was well investigated and elucidated. The results obtained showed that azinphos-methyl and chlorpyrifos were effectively and rapidly degraded by the ultrasound technique. Thus, the operating optimal conditions (initial pH 9, initial pesticide concentration 1 mg/L, frequency 130 kHz, electric power 500 W and treatment time 20 min) lead to a degradation of 78.50% for azinphos-methyl and of 98.96% for chlorpyrifos with in 20 min of contact time. Two multiple regression-based equations were derived to describe the degradation process of the pesticides by the ultrasound treatment. The result of this study showed that the polynomial equations satisfactorily described the behavior of the present process for various operating conditions.