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Readily-available and efficient catalyst is essential for activating oxidants to produce reactive species for deeply remediating water bodies contaminated by antibiotics. In this study, Ferrocene (Fc) was introduced to establish a heterogeneous photo-Fenton system for the degradation of sulfonamide antibiotics, taking sulfamethoxazole as a representative. Results showed that the removal of sulfamethoxazole was effective in Fc-catalyzed photo-Fenton system. Electron spin resonance and radical scavenging experiments verified that there was a photoindued electron transfer process from Fc to H 2 O 2 and dissolved oxygen resulting in the formation of OH that was primarily responsible for the degradation of sulfamethoxazole. The reactions of OH with substructure model compounds of sulfamethoxazole unveiled that aniline moiety was the preferable reaction site of sulfamethoxazole, which was verified by the formation of hydroxylated product and the dimer of sulfamethoxazole in Fc-catalyzed photo-Fenton system. This heterogeneous photo-Fenton system displayed an effective degradation efficiency even in a complex water matrices, and Fc represented a long-term stability by using the catalyst for multiple cycles. These results demonstrate that Fc-catalyzed photo-Fenton oxidation may be an efficient approach for remediation of wastewater containing antibiotics., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

The photo-Fenton process is recognized as a promising technique towards microorganism disinfection in wastewater, but its efficiency is hampered at near-neutral pH operating values. In this work, we overcome these obstacles by using the heterogeneous photo-Fenton process as the default disinfecting technique, targeting MS2 coliphage in wastewater. The use of low concentrations of iron oxides in wastewater without H 2 O 2 (wüstite, maghemite, magnetite) has demonstrated limited semiconductor-mediated MS2 inactivation. Changing the operational pH and the size of the oxide particles indicated that the isoelectric point of the iron oxides and the active surface area are crucial in the success of the process, and the possible underlying mechanisms are investigated. Furthermore, the addition of low amounts of Fe-oxides (1mgL -1 ) and H 2 O 2 in the system (1, 5 and 10mgL -1 ) greatly enhanced the inactivation process, leading to heterogeneous photo-Fenton processes on the surface of the magnetically separable oxides used. Additionally, photo-dissolution of iron in the bulk, lead to homogeneous photo-Fenton, further aided by the complexation by the dissolved organic matter in the solution. Finally, we assess the impact of the presence of the bacterial host and the difference caused by the different iron sources (salts, oxides) and the Fe-oxide size (normal, nano-sized)., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)