| Summary: | This study investigates the degradation of paracetamol, an emerging contaminant widely used as pain and fever reliever, by means of hydrogen peroxide either alone or in combination with UV-C photolysis.
In particular, we provide a comparison between the performance of both commercial and electrogenerated H2O2 whose production has been achieved by galvanostatic electrolysis in undivided reactor with a gas diffusion cathode.
The performance of the treatments has been assessed in terms of both pollutant decay and mineralization. The influence of the H2O2 to paracetamol molar ratio is discussed.
The results show that the electrogenerated hydrogen peroxide, when activated by UV-C irradiation, results in faster degradation and mineralization of paracetamol. However, under the conditions adopted, complete depletion of the total organic carbon (TOC) has never been attained.
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