Homogeneous catalytic wet air oxidation for the treatment of textile wastewaters

An extensive series of experiments was carried out in order to identify suitable catalysts to boost the reaction rate of wet air oxidation of real textile wastewaters at relatively mild temperature and pressure. Experimental results indicated that all catalysts tested in this investigation had shown an impressive increase in the initial COD and TOC removal rate as well as the COD and TOC removal levels in two hours reaction. Among all the catalysts tested, copper salts were more effective than the rest. Anions of the salt solutions also played a role in the catalytic process with nitrate ions having better effect than sulfate ions. Hence copper nitrates were more effective than copper sulfates. It was also found that a mixture of salts with different metals performed better than either of the component single salt alone.