Remediation of antibiotic wastewater by coupled photocatalytic and persulfate oxidation system: A critical review

Recently, antibiotics with high ecotoxicity have been ubiquitously detected in aquatic environment. The photocatalysis/persulfate-oxidation hybrid (PPOH) system has been proved as a promising strategy for antibiotic degradation. The efficient antibiotic removal is due to the favorable synergistic effects between photocatalysis and persulfate activation. To our best knowledge, relevant reviews on the photo-assisted persulfate activation (PPA) system have been reported, while the research progress on persulfate-assisted photocatalysis (PAP) and concurrent photocatalysis-persulfate activation (CPPA) systems for antibiotic wastewater treatment have yet been summarized. Hence, the PPOH systems are categorized into PPA, PAP and CPPA systems in this review. Besides, the performance of antibiotic degradation and internal mechanism in the coupled oxidation system are summarized and analyzed comprehensively. Finally, conclusions and future prospects of PPOH systems in antibiotic wastewater treatment are proposed. This study provides an overview of PPOH system and outlines the future research direction of the system in practical treatment of antibiotic wastewater.