The antiepileptic drug carbamazepine (CBZ) was chosen as the target compound to investigate the degradation efficiency of an oxidation process by thermally activated persulfate (TAP). Furthermore

some key factors affecting this efficiency such as initial persulfate concentrations

temperature and zero-valent iron dosage were also evaluated. The resulted showed that the rate constant of degradating CBZ increased with increase of the initial persulfate concentrations. There appeared a linear relation between the degradation rate constant and the initial persulfate concentration. Elevating temperature could improve the carbamazepine degradation. Carbamazepine degradation by TAP oxidation abided by pseudo-first-order kinetics

activation energy (Ea) was (120.4±2.6) kJ·mol-1. The degradation rate and mineralization degree for Carbamazepine can be significantly improved if a small amount of zero-valent iron was added into TAP system. When the system temperature set at 60℃

the optimum dosage of zero-valent iron was 0.05 g·L-1. Sulfate radicals were prone to attack alkene double bonds in azepine ring and the main intermediate products found were hydroxycarbamazepine

epoxycarbamazepine

pyridine aldehydes and ketones.