Towards Remediation of Halo-organic Pollutants in Water: Electroreduction of Acetochlor in Water at Silver Cathodes

Tuesday, March 09, 2021: 2:30 PM - 2:50 PM

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Description

Chloroacetamides have been a popular class of herbicides since the early 1990s. Since then, the demand for herbicide use has continuously increased, leading to concerns about their toxicity and remediation strategies. In recent years, acetochlor and metolachlor, along with associated degradation products, were included in the contaminant candidate list 4, issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). This accentuates the need to minimize the use and disposal of such halogenated compounds derived from industrial processes. The work presented here aims to provide insights related to electroreduction as a practical application for remediation purposes. Electroreduction offers significant advantages over other remediation techniques as it allows for milder reaction conditions as well as minimization of harmful by-products. Recently, our laboratory investigated the reduction of acetochlor in organic solvents and a mechanism was proposed. In the present study, we transitioned to a more environmentally friendly solvent, namely water, in the hopes that electroreduction approaches previously described can be applied to water treatment strategies in the future. Cyclic voltammetry was employed to evaluate the electrochemical behavior of acetochlor at carbon and silver cathodes in water containing 0.01 M tetraethylammonium benzoate (TEAB). The reduction of acetochlor is more facile at silver (Epc = –1.0 V vs. SCE) than at carbon cathodes (Epc = –1.5 V vs. SCE). Controlled-potential electrolysis, followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), aided in the identification and quantitation of reduction products.

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Additional Info

Keywords: Please select up to 4 keywords ONLY:
Environmental - Water