Due to the rapid development of industry and growth of population, water consumption is increased.
Beside this, releasing of xenobiotics, which represent significant pollutants into watercourse, like
heavy metal ions, pesticides, paints, and solvents, made this problem much bigger. Therefore, they
can enter into aquatic organisms directly from industrial plants or into human bodies indirectly
through agricultural products. New technologies, including photocatalytic decomposition, are
necessary for wastewater treatment as a highly efficient and low-cost process. Photocatalysis implies
the degradation of various types of harmful organic substances to simple molecules such as CO2, SO2,
ions, and water. The applied process has no detrimental effect on the environment and does not require
additional chemicals for precipitation of the products. In this work, photodegradation of the pesticide
difenoconazole (DFC) using a TiO2-based photocatalyst was examined using doubled wall
thermoregulated quartz reactor. As a replacement for UVC radiation, solar imitated Ultra Vitalux
(UV) lamp (300W) was used. Determination of DFC concentration was performed using a UV
method. Degradation kinetics follows pseudo-first order. After 120 minutes, the DFC was completely
degraded. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) also confirmed that successfully indicating that this
process can be used in treating of industrial wastewater.
