LAUSR

A simple and robust eradication process for chlorophenols in natural seawater under natural conditions, i.e., sunlight irradiation, air, was developed. It demonstrated that non-biological environmental factors, air and natural sunlight can lead to efficient degradation of chlorophenols [2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP), 2-chlorophenol (2-CP), 4-chlorophenol (4-CP), 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) and pentachlorophenol (PCP)] in the seawater without any biological factors participating. It is noteworthy that the industrial effluents of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) production which contain some chlorophenols and unknown compounds were also degraded efficiently. Typically, a set amount of TCP was dissolved in 15 mL of seawater, previously passed through 0.45 μm filter to remove solid impurity in a test glass tube and placed out-of-doors under direct sunlight for a set period of time. It was shown that more than 99.3% of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP) in the seawater were removed with only 9 h incubating, without agitation out of the door, and the removal of total organic carbon (TOC) was higher than 83% after sunlight irradiation for 20 days. Our results suggest that inorganic feature environment factors will need to be included in future modeling studies for the environment self-degradation of pollutants.