Paper Title
Degradation of Herbicide Isoproturon using Ruo2 Electrodes
Abstract
The impact of rapid population growth is directly exerting pressure on depleting freshwater resources in many parts
of the world. Trace concentrations of numerous organic compounds (emerging contaminants (EC), and endocrine disrupting
compounds (EDCs) such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP), including prescription drugs and biologics,
nutraceuticals, fragrances, sunscreen agents, and numerous others are reported in various wastewater effluents and aquatic
systems. Herbicide industry is a large consumer of water, as well as a major wastewater generator, its effluents contain priority
organic pollutants in very high concentrations which have severe effects on human health and on the environment due to their
toxicity and bio-recalcitrant nature, persistence in the environment and bioaccumulation. More than three quarters of the total
herbicide load of the effluent of the rural waste water treatment plant consists of isoproturon. Isoproturon is an herbicide
especially used in Asia to control of annual grasses and broad leaved weeds in cereals. Its half-life in water is 30 days, in soils
40 days. The recent study basically deals with only which is tedious and requires large amount of energy. The present work
discusses the treatment of isoproturon by electroxidation using RuO2 electrodes .The parameters varied were initial
concentration of herbicide, pH of the sample solution, electrolyte concentration and time of degradation. The optimized
degradation was found at 40ppm concentration of herbicide at pH 6 with an electrolyte concentration of 1g/l. The degradation
time was observed to be 4 hours which was much less than 8 hours in the case of photo catalysis as studied in literature.
Keywords - Pesticides, Herbicides, Electroxidation and Isoproturon.