Abstract
The efficiency, transformation products, and mechanism of phycocyanin removal from water by simulated sunlight/Cu-decorated TiO2 photocatalyst treatment were studied. After 360 min of photocatalytic degradation, the removal rate of PC was higher than 96%, about 47% of DON was oxidized into NH4+-N, NO3− and NO2−. ·OH was the main active species in the photocatalytic system, which contributes about 55.7% to PC degradation efficiency, H+ and ·O2− also contributed to the photocatalytic activity. The degradation process of phycocyanin is firstly caused by the attack of free radicals, which leads to the disintegration of the chromophore group PCB and the apoprotein, and then apoprotein peptide chain was broken to generate small molecule dipeptides, amino acids, and their derivatives. Amino acid residues sensitive to free radical action in phycocyanin peptide chain include most hydrophobic amino acids such as leucine, isoleucine, proline, valine, phenylalanine, and some hydrophilic amino acids which are easily oxidized such as lysine and arginine. Small molecular peptides (dipeptides), amino acids, and their derivatives are broken off and released into water bodies for further reaction and degradation into smaller molecular weight substances. During this process, part of organic nitrogen was transferred to inorganic nitrogen. When photocatalytic oxidation lasts for 300 min, NH4+ increases from 0.41 mg/L to 2.21 mg/L, and DON removal rate reaches 47%. The Cu-TiO2 photocatalyst was found to decrease the CHCl3 formation potential; however, it exacerbated the production of dichloroacetamide (DCAcAm) and dichloroacetonitrile (DCAN) beyond their initial levels. The divergent trends of these disinfection by-products are due to the fundamental differences in the precursor material.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51378174), the Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.
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Yuan-yuan Ren: writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, methodology, validation, formal analysis, and data curation. Cheng Liu: project administration, conceptualization, resources, and supervision. Zhen Cao: methodology. Cong-cong Li: writing—review and editing. Yu-lin Zheng: resources.
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Ren, Yy., Liu, C., Cao, Z. et al. Performance and degradation mechanism of phycocyanin by Cu-TiO2 photocatalytic treatment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 58304–58314 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26080-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26080-8