**Acknowledgements**

Aguirre et al. in 2016 on the electrochemical treatment of waters containing βlactam antibiotics, where by means of electrolysis, the degradation of the drugs oxacillin (OXA), cloxacillin (CLX), and dicloxacillin (DCX) was achieved. Those drugs are also used as antibiotics [7] like trimethoprim and the clavulanic acidamoxicillin mixture and can affect aquatic systems and health due to the fact that antibiotics are among the most consumed and released drugs to the environment [24]. This release is also due to the unwarranted prescription with antibiotics, its inadequate dispensing, and the laxity in the regulation on the sale of medicines that allows self-medication with antibiotics, which are some of the factors that have been related to this high consumption [24] because it is a chemically defined substance capable of modifying the biochemical and physiological activity in an organism and therefore can produce a biological, beneficial, or toxic effect depending on the dose delivered [25]. Another problem is based on worldwide studies that have evidenced the presence of pharmaceutical compounds in effluents from fully operational treatment plants and with their respective control parameters, apparently operating with a high wastewater purification efficiency [26]; so, it is now known that with conventional wastewater treatments, it is not possible to eliminate this type of compounds in an efficient level [26], having as a consequence the proliferation of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, which will cause major problems in aspects of public health. In the research of Giraldo Aguirre et al. [7], a Ti/IrO2 electrode was used which led to the oxidation process being better, which is due to the characteristics already mentioned for titanium and oxygen; also, the electrolyte that used sodium chloride helped them in the inhibition of microbial activity. This is because during the electrolysis reaction, chlorine gas is released from the electrolyte, but in our case, potassium hydroxide was used with the intention that the system can be incorporated to a wastewater treatment plant, since this technology usually uses biological reactors; therefore, only the breakdown of the molecule was sought without affecting the bio-catalytic bacteria during the subsequent processes. However, Giraldo Aguirre et al. conclude that electrochemical oxidation induces structural changes in antibiotic molecules and their results also indicate that electrochemical treatment is an effective technique for reducing the antibiotic potential that these compounds present, reducing the environmental risk due to the proliferation of bacteria resistant to antibiotics [7]. The aforementioned was also demonstrated within our experimentation when observed the graph of total organic carbon for the two experiments with trimethoprim and the thin layer chromatography for results with the clavulanic acid-amoxicillin mixture. This helps us show that the systems that use electrolysis break these compounds down into compounds that are less harmful to organisms and the environment. This experiment ends up being an important contribution to science in drug treatment and for a later use of electrolytic cells at higher levels, in addition to being highly

versatile and to some extent economical oxidation processes.

The electrolytic cell modifies the structures of both molecules through different mechanisms, but in functional aspects, the electrolytic cell achieves the efficient degradation of trimethoprim unlike the clavulanic acid-amoxicillin mixture. It is established that the electrolytic cell can degrade some molecules more easily than others; so, we can establish that those compounds with a structure similar to trimethoprim could be degraded efficiently. However, it is also shown that to achieve the degradation of other compounds, it is necessary that the conditions of the

**4. Conclusion**

*Electrodialysis*

**58**

electrolytic cell are adjusted again.

All the authors appreciate the financial support given by the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) through the projects: SIP 20181685, SIP 20180081, and SIP 20190101.

## **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.
