The behavior of tetracyclines and their degradation products during swine manure composting

The purposes of this study were to investigate the behavior of three tetracyclines including chlortetracycline (CTC), oxytetracycline (OTC) and tetracycline (TC) and their degradation products in a pilot scale swine manure composting, and also to study the degradation kinetics of CTC, OTC and TC. During the pilot scale composting, CTC, OTC and TC were degraded by 74%, 92% and 70%, respectively. Several degradation products were found like 4-epitetracycline (ETC), 4-epioxytetracycline (EOTC), 4-epichlortetracycline (ECTC), demeclocycline (DMCTC) and anhydrotetracycline (ATC). Both the simple and the adjusted first-order kinetic models successfully fit the degradation process of CTC, OTC and TC during the composting, but the adjusted first-order kinetic model fit much better with the calculated half-lives of 8.2, 1.1 and 10.0 days, respectively.