Abstract
Sea has historically been subject to high anthropogenic pressures of direct and indirect loads of emerging organic pollutants (EOPs) from intensive industrial and agricultural activities. Photoactivated periodate (UV/IO4-) is an innovative oxidation technique that was never tested in seawater as pollutants matrix. In this work, we attempted to investigate the treatment of seawater contaminated with chlorazol black (CB) dye, as a model of EOPs, using photoactivated periodate process. It was found that periodate (0.5 mM) assisted-UV treatment of CB (20 mg L-1) in seawater resulted in 13.16-fold increase in the initial degradation rate, compared to UV alone, and 82% of CB was removed after 40 min face to 38% under UV alone. The beneficial effect of UV/IO4- treatment is strongly dependent on operational parameters. More interestingly, SDS surfactant, as an organic matter, did not affect the degradation process, making UV/IO4- a promising technique for treating seawater contaminated with EOPs.