Herein, we show the first report on the degradation of hazardous organic pollutants in very saline matrice (seawater) using acetone photoactivated process at 253.7 nm. Chloral black (CB), a very persistent dye of well‐established carcinogenic and mutagenic effects, was chosen a substrate model. The photodegradation of CB was monotonically increased in the presence of acetone. About 90% of CB (25.5 µM) was removed after 30 minutes in the presence of 50 mM of acetone whereas only 30% of removal was achieved under UV alone. The process is very sensitive to operational conditions. Chemical probes' tests using oxygen and KI have evidenced that methyl radical (CH3●) is the primarily radical involved in the CB degradation upon UV/acetone treatment. The formation of CH3● is thermodynamically favourable since the energy per Einstein of 253.7 nm light (~113 kcal) is large enough to break the C–C bond in the acetone molecule (70 kcal).
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