Cold atmospheric plasma: an effective approach for fast benazoxystrobin degradation via generating reactive oxygen species

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has demonstrated its efficacy in degrading organophosphorus or organochlorine pesticide residues without generating secondary pollution. Yet its potential in degrading triazole pesticides and methoxyacrylate pesticides that are gaining popularities in more and more countries remains unexplored. Using benazoxystrobin as the modelling molecule to be degraded, we demonstrated in this paper that CAP could effectively degrade triazole or methoxyacrylate pesticides, with the efficacy being influenced by many factors such as the voltage, flow rate, and frequency. Specifically, CAP could effectively degrade benazoxystrobin via destroying the benzene ring structure; the degradation efficacy can reach 90%, with ‘ionized oxygen’, ‘60 V voltage’ ‘2 L.min−1 oxygen flow rate’ and ‘9 min treatment duration’ being associated with the optimal degradation effect; active CAP articles capable of degrading benazoxystrobin are enriched with ROS, where more oxygen is needed to degrade higher concentration of benazoxystrobin. Our study, for the first time, showed the efficacy of CAP in degrading triazole and methoxyacrylate type of pesticides, providing experimental support for its industrial translation.