Journal of Hazardous Materials B103 (2003) 233–246 Ozonation and H 2 O 2 /UV treatment of clofibric acid in water: a kinetic investigation Roberto Andreozzi ∗ , Vincenzo Caprio, Raffaele Marotta, Anita Radovnikovic Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Piazzale V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy Received 10 March 2003; received in revised form 2 April 2003; accepted 29 July 2003 Abstract The presence of pharmaceuticals or their active metabolites in surface and ground waters has been recently reported as mainly due to an incomplete removal of these pollutants in sewage treatment plants (STP). Advanced oxidation processes may represent a suitable tool to reduce environmental release of these species by enhancing the global efficiency of reduction of pharmaceuticals in the municipal sewage plant effluents. The present work aims at assessing the kinetics of abatement from aqueous solutions of clofibric acid (a metabolite of the blood lipid regulator clofibrate) which has been found in surface, ground and drinking waters. Ozonation and hydrogen peroxide photolysis are capable of fast removal of this species in aqueous solution, with an almost complete conversion of the organic chlorine content into chloride ions for the investigated reaction conditions. A vali- dation of assessed kinetics at clofibric acid concentrations as low as those found in STP effluents is presented for both systems. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Clofibric acid; Drugs; Ozonation; Hydrogen peroxide photolysis; AOP processes; Kinetics 1. Introduction Following the first studies in the 1980s [1–3], a recent increasing interest in the presence of pharmaceuticals or their active metabolites in the aquatic environment is documented [4–10]. A fairly high number of drugs belonging to different pharmaceutical classes has been detected in surface and ground waters at concentration ranging from nanograms to micrograms per liter. Previous investigations generally conclude that the main source of these environmental pollutants are the effluents of the sewage treatment plants (STP). In fact, ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-081-7682251; fax: +39-081-5936936. E-mail address: roberto.andreozzi@unina.it (R. Andreozzi). 0304-3894/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2003.07.001