Determination of selected estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals in effluent flowing into the sea, and designing the photocatalytic treatment system in order to increase the estrogen remove

Due to the urbanization, industrial and agricultural activities, the quality of the depleted water resources is decreasing. In particular, the discharge of wastewater into the sea cause to major problems in terms of ecosystems. In this case, it is of great importance to increase the water quality, optimize the wastewater purification by applied environmentally friendly methods. Endocrine disrupting chemicals which includes over 800 compounds, threaten the health of the environment and living organisms. These chemicals are among the priority research topics until 2020 due to the problems they create on living organisms. Estrogens are the most known group of EDCs. In addition to synthetic estrogens or chemicals that exhibit estrogenic effects, vertebrate organisms and some plants naturally produce estrogens and continuously released into the environment. The discharge point of wastewater treatment plants is the main source of estrogens in water sources. The technology used in the waste water treatment plants is so considerable for health of water resources and living organizms, nevertheless, sometimes even advanced methods are insufficient in the treatment of some impurities. Advanced oxidation processes have been proven to be effective in removing organic pollutants as environmentally friendly methods. In this study, photocatalytic reaction was studied in the aim of remove the target substances. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) as photocatalyst and UV-C as light source were used for this purpose. Estrone and 17β-Estradiol have been chosen as target compounds as the most common estrogens in wastewater. Treatment of artificial and real wastewater by have been applied by using TiO2 covered glass to eliminate the problems encountered in previous studies. The variable factors were selected as time, pH and light intensity the Series of tests were performed. Due to results of chemical analysis for each sample the most efficient application was determined by the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) method. According to the results, disintegration of both analytes increased in basic medium. The highest treatment rate was determined in samples exposed to UV light intensity of 10.08 W / m2 over a 52.49 minute period.