Management of Agricultural Water Containing Acetimidothioic Acid Pesticide through Catalytic Oxidation to Facilitate Reclaimed Water Recycling for Sustainable Food Production

Abstract

Agro-industrial discharge contains acetimidothioic acid, which is commercially named “Lanox 90” and is a widely applied insecticide in greenhouses, and the result is wastewater loaded with this insecticide. Treating such wastewater is a must to reduce the environmental impact as well as to facilitate the opportunity for water recycling. Thus, the present work introduced Montmorillonite (MMT) clay as a novel Fenton reaction source to treat wastewater loaded with Lanox 90 insecticide as a benign sustainable strategy. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) supported with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used to characterize the MMT sample. Response surface methodology based on Box–Behnken analysis was selected to optimize the parametric circumstances. The optimized parameters of the proposed technique were obtained at a pH of 2.6 with the addition of 0.8 and 854 mg/L of MMT and H2O2, respectively, to attain the highest predicted Lanox 90 removal rate of 97%. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the statistical data and displayed a significant quadratic model. Ultimately, the results reveal that the oxidation system is exothermic and has a non-spontaneous nature, and the reaction kinetics are categorized according to the second-order reaction kinetic rate. The results of the current study indicate the importance of MMT for treating wastewater. These results confirm the possibility of using oxidation technique as a suitable candidate for greenhouse effluent management to enhance the efficiency of water recycling for smart irrigation.