Emerging Trends in Kinetics and Thermodynamics

Letter to the Editor Pages 28-29

Enthalpy - Entropy Compensation in the Hydrolysis of Four Tetracycline Antibiotics

Authors: Yash J Patel, Tanisha N Patel and Jonghoon Kang

Abstract: An article recently published analyzed the hydrolytic transformation of four tetracycline antibiotics - tetracycline, chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline, and doxycycline - under various environmental settings and determined their parents and transformation products in the wastewater treatment plants. In the article, the authors found that the hydrolytic behavior of the four tetracycline antibiotics followed first-order reaction kinetics and that the rates of the acidcatalyzed hydrolysis were significantly lower than the rates of the base-catalyzed and neutral pH hydrolysis. By applying the Arrhenius approach, the authors identified activation energy, which measures the effect of temperature on tetracycline hydrolysis, to range from 42 kJ/mol to 77 kJ/mol at pH 7. Hydrolytic degradation rates for all four tetracycline antibiotics increased with elevating temperatures, providing a clear indication of temperature-dependent kinetics.

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