Oxidative degradation of nitroguanidine (NQ) by UV-C and oxidants: Hydrogen peroxide, persulfate and peroxymonosulfate

Amalia Terracciano, Agamemnon Koutsospyros, Christos Christodoulatos, Andrew Mai, Xiaoguang Meng, Tsan Liang Su, Benjamin Smolinski

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Nitroguanidine (NQ), a component used in insensitive munitions formulations, has high solubility which often leads to highly contaminated wastewater streams. In this work, batch experiments were conducted to investigate and compare the NQ degradation by UV-based advanced oxidation processes (AOPs); hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), persulfate (PS) and peroxymonosulfate (PMS) were selected as oxidants. A preliminary evaluation of AOPs kinetics, byproducts, and potential degradation pathways were carried out and compared to NQ degradation by direct UV-C photolysis. The effects of oxidant dosage, NQ concentrations and pH were evaluated by determining the respective kinetic constants of degradation. Among the treatments applied, UV/PS showed to be a promising and effective alternative leading to faster rates of degradation respect to both oxidant dosage (25 mM) and initial NQ concentrations (≤24 mM). Nevertheless, the degradation rate of NQ by UV/PS appeared to be affected strongly by the initial pH compared to UV/H2O2 and UV/PMS, with the lowest rate overall at pH ≥ 8.0. In addition, the main byproducts from NQ degradation, guanidine and cyanamide, showed to be involved in further degradation steps only with UV/PS and UV/PMS suggesting higher degradation effectiveness of these oxidants compared UV/H2O2 and UV alone.

Original languageEnglish
Article number133357
JournalChemosphere
Volume292
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2022

Keywords

  • AOP
  • Degradation products
  • HO
  • Nitroguanidine
  • Peroxymonosulfate
  • Persulfate

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