Electrochemical degradation of amoxicillin in acidic aqueous medium using TiO2-based electrodes modified by oxides of transition metals.

One of the most widely used antibiotics is amoxicillin (AMX), which is the most widely used in humans and animals, but it is discharged metabolically due to its indigestibility. Conventional biological and physicochemical methods for removing AMX from water are not enough to mineralize it; it is only concentrated and transferred to produce new residues that require further processing to remove the new residues. In this research, naked and modified surfaces with TiO2 nanotubes (TiO2,nt) electrophoretically modified with PbO2, IrO2, RuO2, and Ta2O5 were used to evaluate their efficiency in the electrochemical degradation of AMX in acid media (0.1 mol L-1 H2SO4). After their comparison, Pb-Ta 50:50|TiO2,nt|Ti showed the highest removal efficiency of AMX (44.71%) with the lowest specific energy consumption (8.69 ± 0.78 kWh Kg COD-1) and the average instant current efficiency of 26.67 ± 9.19%, in comparison with the others naked and modified surfaces of TiO2,nt∣Ti.