Abstract :
The photocatalytic oxidation of a common antibiotic, the lincomycin was carried out in aqueous suspensions of
polycrystalline TiO2 Degussa P25 irradiated by sunlight. In order to improve the performance of the lincomycin degradation
a hybrid system consisting of a solar photoreactor with the photocatalyst in suspension coupled with a membrane
module, used to confine both photocatalyst and pollutants in the reaction environment, was tested.
A preliminary study was carried out in order to determine some kinetics parameters of the drug photodegradation.
The influence of initial substrate concentration on the lincomycin photooxidation rate was investigated. The photooxidation
rate follows a pseudo-first order kinetics with respect to the lincomycin concentration under the used experimental
conditions. The presence of the membrane reactor allows the catalyst separation and to operate in continuous mode
as the membranes rejection for lincomycin and its oxidation products was quite high.
2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
