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How UV photolysis accelerates the biodegradation and mineralization of sulfadiazine (SD)

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Abstract

Sulfadiazine (SD), one of broad-spectrum antibiotics, exhibits limited biodegradation in wastewater treatment due to its chemical structure, which requires initial mono-oxygenation reactions to initiate its biodegradation. Intimately coupling UV photolysis with biodegradation, realized with the internal loop photobiodegradation reactor, accelerated SD biodegradation and mineralization by 35 and 71 %, respectively. The main organic products from photolysis were 2-aminopyrimidine (2-AP), p-aminobenzenesulfonic acid (ABS), and aniline (An), and an SD-photolysis pathway could be identified using C, N, and S balances. Adding An or ABS (but not 2-AP) into the SD solution during biodegradation experiments (no UV photolysis) gave SD removal and mineralization rates similar to intimately coupled photolysis and biodegradation. An SD biodegradation pathway, based on a diverse set of the experimental results, explains how the mineralization of ABS and An (but not 2-AP) provided internal electron carriers that accelerated the initial mono-oxygenation reactions of SD biodegradation. Thus, multiple lines of evidence support that the mechanism by which intimately coupled photolysis and biodegradation accelerated SD removal and mineralization was through producing co-substrates whose oxidation produced electron equivalents that stimulated the initial mono-oxygenation reactions for SD biodegradation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50978164), Key Project of Basic Research in Shanghai (11JC1409100), the Special Foundation of Chinese Colleges and Universities Doctoral Discipline (20113127110002), Special Fund of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (13K09ESPCT), Open research funds from Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Science and Technology, Program of Shanghai Normal University (DZL123 and SK201336), and the United States National Science Foundation (0651794), National High Technology Research and Development Program 863(2012AA06A304).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, College of Life and Environmental Science, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, People’s Republic of China

    Shihui Pan, Ning Yan, Xinyue Liu, Wenbing Wang & Yongming Zhang

  2. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Science and Technology, Department of Environmental Technology and Ecology, Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, Jiaxing, 314006, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Liu

  3. Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-5701, USA

    Bruce E. Rittmann

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  1. Shihui Pan
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  2. Ning Yan
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  3. Xinyue Liu
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  4. Wenbing Wang
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  5. Yongming Zhang
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  6. Rui Liu
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  7. Bruce E. Rittmann
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Correspondence to Yongming Zhang.

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Pan, S., Yan, N., Liu, X. et al. How UV photolysis accelerates the biodegradation and mineralization of sulfadiazine (SD). Biodegradation 25, 911–921 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-014-9711-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10532-014-9711-4

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