Advanced Electrochemical Degradation of Organic Pollutants from Water Using Sb-Doped SnO₂/Ti Anode and Assisted by Granular Activated Carbon

In this paper, mesoporous electrodes consisting of Sb-doped SnO2 deposited onto Ti plates that had undergone controlled corrosion under acidic medium were synthesized via a spin-coating method and morpho-structurally characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrodes were electrochemically tested to examine their degradation/mineralization through electrooxidation (EO) of doxorubicin (DOX) as a single component and multi-component, together with capecitabine (CCB) from the cytostatic class and humic acid (HA) from the natural organic matter (NOM) class in the absence/the presence of activated carbon (AC) as a particulate electrode. The best mineralization efficiency of 67% was achieved for DOX mineralization using Sb-doped SnO2 deposited onto a Ti plate that had undergone controlled corrosion with oxalic acid during the electrooxidation process. The presence of AC within the electrolysis process generated a synergistic effect of 52.75% for total organic carbon (TOC) parameter removal, which is in accordance with and significantly better than the results reported in the literature. The aspects related to the complex mechanism of DOX degradation and mineralization are discussed. The superiority of AC assisted electrooxidation, as electrochemical filtering (EF), was proved, considering simultaneous degradation and mineralization of mixture of doxorubicin, capecitabine and humic acid.