Benzoylecgonine (BE) is the major metabolite of cocaine and a contaminant of emerging concern often detected in sewage treatment plant (STP) effluents and surface waters. In this study, an innovative microcapillary film (MCF) array photoreactor made of fluoropolymer material was used to determine the direct photolysis quantum yield of benzoylecgonine at 254 nm. The quantum yield of BE was found to be (6.22 ± 0.19) × 10-3 mol ein-1. The proposed methodology was validated by estimating the quantum yield of caffeine (7.48 10-4 ± 0.64) × 10-4 mol ein-1, which was found in agreement with results published in literature. The MCF uses a very small sample volume (in the order of 330μl per meter length of material) and allows extremely rapid photolysis with a short contact time ranging from a fraction of seconds to a few minutes. This new microfluidics approach presented in this study is particularly useful for determining the photochemical behavior of highly priced pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, metabolites and uncommon or regulated substances.
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Chemical Engineering
Published in
Chemical Engineering Journal
Volume
283
Pages
243 - 250
Citation
RUSSO, D. ...et al., 2015. Direct photolysis of benzoylecgonine under UV irradiation at 254nm in a continuous flow microcapillary array photoreactor. Chemical Engineering Journal, 283, pp. 243-250.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Chemical Engineering Journal and the definitive published version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2015.07.061