Amlodipine removal via peroxymonosulfate activated by carbon nanotubes/cobalt oxide (CNTs/Co 3 O 4 ) in water

Amlodipine (AML) is an effective drug that has been widely used for hypertension and angina. However, AML is frequently detected in aqueous environments, posing potential risks to human and ecological health. In this study, the degradation of AML via peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activated by CNTs/Co 3 O 4 was investigated. CNTs/Co 3 O 4 was prepared via a facile method, and multiple characterizations suggested that Co 3 O 4 were uniformly dispersed on the surface of MWCNTs-COOH. Experimental results indicated that complete removal of 10 μM AML was achieved within 30 min by using 2 mg/L CNTs/Co 3 O 4 and 4 μM PMS at 25 °C in PBS buffered solution (pH 7.0). The observed pseudo-first-order rate constant was calculated to be 0.1369 min −1 . Interestingly, the presence of 100 mM Cl − resulted in a slight enhancement of AML removal rate from 0.0528 to 0.0642 min −1 . The addition of 100 mM HCO 3 − , 5 mg/L Pony Lake fulvic acid (PLFA), or Suwannee River humic acid (SRHA) retarded AML degradation by 15.5, 0.7, and 1.6 times, respectively. As per the quenching experiments, SO 4 ⦁− rather than ⦁OH were verified to be the dominant reactive oxygen species (ROS). Additionally, ten major intermediates were identified using TOF-LC-MS and three associated reaction pathways including ether bond broken, H-abstraction, and hydroxylation were proposed. We outlook these findings to advance the feasibility of organic contaminants removal via CNTs/Co 3 O 4 + PMS systems that have extremely low-level PMS.