In advanced oxidation processes, the application of ozonation has been immensely used in recent years for the treatment of effluent water from pharmaceutical, textile and chemical industries. In this study, procian blue, a major and vastly used reactive dye in the textile industry was chosen for ozonation. This work investigated the effect of ozonation for the treatment of synthetic textile effluent water. The change of pH values of dye solutions from 2-12 had moderate effect on dye removal. The degradation rate was faster during the initial period of ozonation and reached highest dye removal around 90 minutes. The highest 87% removal of dye was observed for the case of 60 mg/L dye solution at pH 12. At higher pH, the dye degradation increased as the rate of formation of hydroxyl radical increased with pH. Factors influencing on dye degradation like concentration of dye, time of ozonation, and addition of H2O2 with ozone (combined treatment) were also evaluated. The combined treatment (5 g/L of hydrogen peroxide) increased the degradation of dye to 92% as compared to 85% for pure ozonation process of 60 mg/L dye solution of initial pH 10. The procian blue dye degradation followed pseudo-first order kinetics with a value of rate constant 2.48×10-2 /min.

With increasing population growth and climate change, de facto reuse practices are predicted to increase globally. We investigated a longitudinal gradient within the Uhlava River, a representative watershed, where de facto reuse is actively occurring, during Fall and Spring seasons when instream flows vary. We observed human pharmaceutical levels in the river to continuously increase from the mountainous areas upstream to downstream locations and a potable intake location, with the highest concentrations found in small tributaries. Significant relationship was identified between mass flow of pharmaceuticals and the size of human populations contributing to wastewater treatment plant discharges. Advanced ozonation and granular activated carbon filtration effectively removed pharmaceuticals from potable source waters. We observed a higher probability of encountering a number of targeted pharmaceuticals during colder Spring months when stream flows were elevated compared to warmer conditions with lower flows in the Fall despite a dilution paradigm routinely applied for surface water quality assessment and management efforts. Such observations translated to greater water quality hazards during these higher Spring flows. Future water monitoring efforts should account for periods when higher chemical uses occur, particularly in the face of climate change for regions experiencing population growth and de facto reuse.

The search for optimal catalysts to improve the working efficiency of ozonation has always been an important issue in the research field of advanced oxidation processes. In this study, a novel catalyst, ferrosilicon, was selected as the catalyst in heterogeneous catalytic ozonation to degrade ibuprofen (IBP) in water and treat real pharmaceutical wastewater. During the procedure, 45#ferrosilicon exhibited the best catalytic activity. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the IBP removal reached 75%, which was a great improvement compared to the 37% removal by ozone alone. The 45#-ferrosilicon-catalysed ozonation also achieved 68% TOC removal for real pharmaceutical wastewater, which was 31% higher than that by ozone alone. The degradation pathway of IBP was proposed using GC/MS. The EPR test proved that the main active species in the system were free active radicals •OH, and the measured accumulative •OH amount was 102 μmol. The characterization results show that the nascent metallic oxides, hydroxides, and hydroxyoxides on the ferrosilicon surface facilitated the decomposition of ozone molecules and generation of free active radicals. The removal of target organic contaminants in the water was mainly attributed to the oxidization of these highly active species.

Effluent is often treated with ozone before being discharged into a natural water environment. This process will change the interaction between effluent organic matter and pollutants in aquatic environment. The impact of ozonation on complexation between dissolved organic matter in such wastewater and sulfadimidine often found in natural water was studied in laboratory experiments using four types of real wastewater. Ozonation was found to decrease the proportion of organic matter with a molecular weight greater than 5 kDa as well as protein-like, fulvic-like and humic-like components, but except the proportion of hydrophilic components. The aromaticity of the dissolved organic matter was also reduced after ozonation. The complexation of tryptophan and tyrosine with sulfadimidine mainly depends on their hydrophobicity and large molecular weight. Ozonation of fulvic and humic acid tends to produce small and medium molecular weight hydrophilics. The complexation of humic and fulvic acids with sulfadimidine was enhanced by ozonation. Dissolved organic matter, with or without oxidation, were found to weaken sulfadimidine’s inhibition of microbial growth, especially for Aeromonas and Acinetobacter species. This finding will expand our understanding about the impact of advanced treatment processes on the dissolved organic matters’ properties in effluent.

Syringic acid, which is a typical methoxyphenol emitted from wood combustion, can provide heterogeneous reaction sites for gaseous active components, influencing the concentrations of trace gases and the compositions of syringic acid. The heterogeneous uptake of O₃ on syringic acid was investigated using a flow tube reactor under ambient pressure. The initial uptake coefficient (γᵢ) and the steady-state uptake coefficient (γₛₛ) of O₃ linearly increased with syringic acid mass (0–0.16 μg cm⁻²) and temperature (278–328 K), while they decreased with increasing the O₃ concentration and the O₂ content. The γᵢ was independent of relative humidity (20%–70%), whereas γₛₛ decreased with relative humidity (7%–70%). The compositional changes of syringic acid by the ozonization were analyzed by the Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) and the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), confirming the generation of 2,6-dimethoxy-1,4-benzoquinone. In addition, compared to that of fresh syringic acid, the mass absorption efficiency of syringic acid aged by O₃ exhibited an increase in the range of 290–320 nm.

Antibiotics as emerging pharmaceutical pollutants have seriously not only threatened human life and animal health security, but also caused environmental pollution. It has drawn enormous attention and research interests in the study of antibiotics removal from aqueous environments. Graphene, an interesting one-atom-thick, 2D single-layer carbon sheet with sp² hybridized carbon atoms, has become an important agent for removal of antibiotic, owing to its unique physiochemical properties. Recently, a variety of graphene-based nanomaterials (GNMs) are reported to efficiently remove antibiotics from aqueous solutions by different technologies. In this review, we summarize different structure and properties of GNMs for the removal of antibiotics by adsorption. Meanwhile, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), such as photocatalysis, Fenton process, ozonation, sulfate radical and combined AOPs by the aid of GNMs are summarized. Finally, the opportunities and challenges on the future scope of GNMs for removal of antibiotics from aqueous environments are proposed.

The present endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in wastewater effluents due to incomplete removal during the treatment processes may cause potential ecological and human health risks. This study evaluated the removal and uptake of seven EDCs spiked in two types of wastewater effluent (i.e., ultrafiltration and ozonation) and effluent cultivated with the freshwater green alga Nannochloris sp. In ultrafiltration effluent cultivated with Nannochloris sp. for 7 days, the removal rate of 17β-estradiol (E2), 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), and salicylic acid (SAL) was 60%; but Nannochloris sp. did not promote the removal of other EDCs studied. The algal-mediated removal of E2, EE2, and SAL was attributed to photodegradation and biodegradation. Triclosan (TCS) underwent rapid photodegradation regardless of adding algae in the effluent with 63%–100% removal within 7 days. Triclosan was also found associated with algal cells immediately after adding algae, and thus the primary mechanisms involved were photodegradation and bioremoval (i.e., bioadsorption and bioaccumulation). After algal cultivation, TCS still has a bioaccumulation potential to pose high risks within the food web and the endocrine disrupting properties of the residual estrogens in the effluent are not eliminated. Algal cultivation can be exploited to treat wastewater effluents but the removal efficiencies of EDCs highly depend on chemical types.

Nitrogen deposition and tropospheric ozone are important drivers of vegetation damage, but their interactive effects are poorly understood. This study assessed whether long-term nitrogen deposition altered sensitivity to ozone in a semi-natural vegetation community. Mesocosms were collected from sand dune grassland in the UK along a nitrogen gradient (5–25 kg N/ha/y, including two plots from a long-term experiment), and fumigated for 2.5 months to simulate medium and high ozone exposure. Ozone damage to leaves was quantified for 20 ozone-sensitive species. Soil solution dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and soil extracellular enzymes were measured to investigate secondary effects on soil processes.Mesocosms from sites receiving the highest N deposition showed the least ozone-related leaf damage, while those from the least N-polluted sites were the most damaged by ozone. This was due to differences in community-level sensitivity, rather than species-level impacts. The N-polluted sites contained fewer ozone-sensitive forbs and sedges, and a higher proportion of comparatively ozone-resistant grasses. This difference in the vegetation composition of mesocosms in relation to N deposition conveyed differential resilience to ozone.Mesocosms in the highest ozone treatment showed elevated soil solution DOC with increasing site N deposition. This suggests that, despite showing relatively little leaf damage, the ‘ozone resilient’ vegetation community may still sustain physiological damage through reduced capacity to assimilate photosynthate, with its subsequent loss as DOC through the roots into the soil.We conclude that for dune grassland habitats, the regions of highest risk to ozone exposure are those that have received the lowest level of long-term nitrogen deposition. This highlights the importance of considering community- and ecosystem-scale impacts of pollutants in addition to impacts on individual species. It also underscores the need for protection of ‘clean’ habitats from air pollution and other environmental stressors.

With the ever-increasing amounts of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) accumulating from Canada's oil sands operations, its eventual release must be considered. As OSPW has been found to be both acutely and chronically toxic to aquatic organisms, remediation processes must be developed to lower its toxicity. Ozone treatment is currently being studied as a tool to facilitate the removal of organic constituents associated with toxicity. Biomarkers (e.g. gene expression) are commonly used when studying the effects of environmental contaminants, however, they are not always indicative of adverse effects at the whole organism level. In this study, we assessed the effects of OSPW exposure on developing zebrafish by linking gene expression to relevant cellular and whole organism level endpoints. We also investigated whether or not ozone treatment decreased biomarkers and any associated toxicity observed from OSPW exposure. The concentrations of classical naphthenic acids in the raw and ozonated OSPW used in this study were 16.9 mg/L and 0.6 mg/L, respectively. Ozone treatment reduced the total amount of naphthenic acids (NAs) in the OSPW sample by 92%. We found that exposure to both raw and ozonated OSPW had no effect on the survival of zebrafish embryos. The expression levels of biotransformation genes CYP1A and CYP1B were induced by raw OSPW exposure, with CYP1B being more highly expressed than CYP1A. In contrast, ozonated OSPW exposure did not increase the expression of CYP1A and only slightly induced CYP1B. A decrease in cardiac development and function genes (NKX2.5 and APT2a2a) was not associates with large changes in heart rate, arrhythmia or heart size. We did not find any indications of craniofacial abnormalities or of increased occurrence of apoptotic cells. Overall, our study found that OSPW was not overtly toxic to zebrafish embryos.

Two mesotrophic grassland species, Ranunculus acris and Dactylis glomerata were exposed to a range of ozone treatments (16.2–89.5 ppb 24 h mean) and two watering regimes under naturally fluctuating photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and temperature. Stomatal conductance was measured throughout the experiments, and the combined data set (>1000 measurements) was analysed for effects of low and high ozone on responses to environmental stimuli. We show that when D. glomerata and R. acris were grown in 72.6–89.5 ppb ozone the stomata consistently lose the ability to respond, or have reduced response, to naturally fluctuating environmental conditions in comparison to their response in low ozone. The maximum stomatal conductance (gmax) was also significantly higher in the high ozone treatment for D. glomerata. We discuss the hypotheses for the reduced sensitivity of stomatal closure to a changing environment and the associated implications for ozone flux modelling.