Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) constitute an important group of micropollutants, which are known to be mutagenic, carcinogenic and/or co-carcinogenic and relatively persistent in the environment. The effects of chlorine dioxide (ClO2) on the degradation of anthracene (ANTH), pyrene (PYR) and benzo[a]anthracene (BaA) in aqueous solution were investigated using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In preliminary experiments, it was observed that ClO2 could remove these three PAHs effectively within a short time. Several factors including reaction time, the concentration of ClO2 and pH of the reaction mixture influencing the degradation ratio of PAHs have been studied by batch experiments. The results showed that the degradation ratio of PAHs was affected by reaction time and the concentration of ClO2 instead of pH. The degradation ratio of ANTH, PYR and BaA could reach their maximum as approximately 99.0%, 67.5% and 89.5%, respectively, under the condition as follows: reaction time 30, 60 and 120 min, the concentration of ClO2 0.1, 0.4 and 0.5 mmol·L-1, and pH 7.2. ANTH was selected as the representative to study the reaction mechanism with ClO2. The oxidation products formed in the reaction of ANTH with ClO2 were tentatively identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and the results showed that the main product was 9, 10-anthraquinone, which could be biodegraded more easily and quickly than ANTH. Through analyzing the reaction properties of ANTH and ClO2, the possible pathway for the ANTH-ClO2 reaction was proposed based on the theory of single electron transfer (SET).
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