Study of Pharmaceuticals Degradationby Advanced Oxidation Processes

At present, the issue of occurrence of female sex hormones, estrogens and progestogens, in aquatic ecosystems is often discussed by experts and the general public. These substances of steroid structure can be difficult to remove completely by conventional wastewater and drinking water treatment technologies. In given context advanced oxidation processes based on in situ generation of highly reactive hydroxyl radicals can be a suitable technique. This thesis deals with the study of kinetics and degradation products of photocatalytic decomposition of seven female sex hormones (estrone, -estradiol, estriol, ethinylestradiol, diethylstilbestrol, progesterone and norethindrone). Experiments were conducted in a laboratory glass reactor, which was equipped with an energy efficient UV-A LED light source (365 nm emission wavelength) and an immobilised photocatalyst in a form of TiO2 five-layer film deposited on glass. Model samples of water with the initial hormone concentration of 1 mg·L-1 were used and the degradation process was monitored by an HPLC-MS method. In the given system all compounds of interest except estriol had very significant tendency to be adsorb. In the case of estriol the formal rate constant of photocatalytic decomposition was determined based on the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model for two different initial concentrations, 0.5527 hour-1 (1 mg·L-1) and 0.1929 hour-1 (5 mg·L-1), and by comparison of these values it was found that the higher degraded compound concentration, the slower decomposition (fivefold increase of the initial concentration resulted in the constant decrease to almost one-third). Moreover nine degradation products of estriol photocatalytic decomposition were recorded and their structure was designed based on mass spectra. In the second thematic part of the thesis attention was paid to development of a SPE-HPLC-MS method for simultaneous determination of female sex hormones in water ecosystems, with emphasis on an extraction part optimization. The final samples treatment process included besides extraction with Supel™ Select HLB 200 mg SPE cartridges also mechanical impurities removal, hormones extraction from solids trapped on filtration material, sample acidification and extract purification with Supelclean™ ENVI-Florisil® cartridges. Optimised method was used for determination of female sex hormones in two Brno rivers, Svitava and Svratka. In the most cases the concentration was below the detection or quantification limit