Background: Diazinon is one of the most important pesticides extremely used in agriculture. Since these compounds are resistant to biodegradation, the arrival of these compounds to water resources has become a serious environmental problem. Therefore, in the current work, the removal of diazinon from groundwater was investigated using advanced oxidation processes electro Fenton.
Methods: the current work was conducted in lab scale. The effect of operating parameters such as initial concentration of diazinon (1-30 mg.L^-1), pH solution(3-9), current density (1-10 mA.cm^-2), reaction time (3-30 min), and dosage of H₂O₂ (20-100 µL.L^-1) were investigated. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the parameters and suggested model was analyzed using ANOVA.
Results: On the optimum condition including initial diazinon concentration of 6.88 mg.L^-1, pH solution of 3, the reaction time of 10 min, the current density of 8.18 mA.cm^-2, and dosage H₂O₂ of 83.78 µL.L^-1 removal efficiency of diazinon was found to be 98.5 %. Electrical energy consumption (EEC) was found to be 0.524 kWh.m^-3. Moreover, the concentration of diazinon in groundwater was found to be 0.934±0.053 µg.L^-1.
Conclusion: According to the obtained results, electro Fenton process was found to be an efficient technique for successful removal of diazinon and other resistant ungradable organic compound from water sources.