Highly Efficient, Ultra-Low Energy Consumption Process for Phenol Wastewater Treatment with Ultra-Low Carbon Emission

Phenol is one of the main pollutants in phenol wastewater and has been proved non-biodegradable. In this study, based on strongly ring-opening capability of boron doped diamond film electrode, a highly efficient and energy-saving method with ultra-low carbon emission is established through a combination of electrochemical oxidation and biological degradation. On one hand, electrochemical oxidation as pretreatment can solve the critical problem that phenol wastewater is a biological recalcitrant. On the other hand, the relatively low current efficiency during the late stage of electrochemical oxidation can be solved by follow-up biological treatment, thus reduce the energy consumption and the cost significantly. More importantly, the carboxylic acids (oxidized from phenol) can be fully used as carbon source (no additional carbon source is added) for microbial growth instead of being oxidized to carbon dioxide and water through selecting optimizing sequencing batch reactor access time, so the carbon emission is greatly reduced. The results showed that it can save about 76.5% energy consumption and about 51.2% chemical oxygen demand can be used to maintain microorganism self-reproduction. This is significant that this combined technology not only runs highly effectively at low cost, but also reduces the emission of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, thus environment friendly with wide application prospects.