Ozone treatment of olive mill wastewater.

In the present work, the ozonation of olive mill wastewater has been studied. The evolution process was followed by measuring the chemical oxygen demand, the aromaticity and the contents of phenolic compounds. The aromaticity conversion ranged between 4.85 and 21%, chemical oxygen demand degradation varied from 3.25 to 19.4%, and the total polyphenolic reduction varied between 6.86 and 43.7%. The ozone consumption in the reduction of each variable was determined, being the average values of 57.2 g COD/mol O-3, 2.9 Un. Abs/mol O-3 and 3.3 g polyphen./mol O-3. Finally, considering a first order kinetic equation with respect to each reactant, the apparent kinetic constants are evaluated for the studied variables.