The present work, for the first time, establishes degradation behavior of ciprofloxacin (CIP), a widely used fluoroquinolone group of antibiotics, using vortex flow based hydro-dynamic cavitation (HC) for low to high concentrations of CIP (10 and 100 mg/L). Effect of pressure on the degradation of CIP and TOC reduction was investigated on pilot plant scale (capacity 1 m3/h). Process intensifications using aeration as well as hydrogen per-oxide (H2O2) were also investigated. While aeration did not yield any significant en-hancement, process intensification using H2O2 resulted in similar to 200% enhancement in the CIP degradation as compared to HC alone. Excellent degradations, to an extent of 79 & 95%, were achieved corresponding to high cavitational yields of 7.2 x 10-4 mg/J and 86.8 x 10-4 mg/J for CIP concentrations of 10 and 100 mg/L respectively using the process intensified approach of HC and H2O2, not reported so far for cavitating devices without moving ele-ments. The developed methodology demonstrated 4-7 times improvement in per-pass degradation and low cost with high efficiency compared to the conventional cavitation. The results clearly highlight utility of the process intensified approach using H2O2 for the degradation of CIP even at high concentrations, specifically important for pharmaceutical industries requiring zero liquid discharge norms.(c) 2022 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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