Treatment of refractory organics contained in actual agro-industrial wastewaters by UV/H2O2

In this work, the treatment of actual agro-industrial wastewaters (IWW) by a UV/H2O2 process has been investigated. The aqueous wastes were received from industrial olive oil mills and then treated by laboratory scale physicochemical methods, i.e., coagulation using ferrous and aluminum sulfate, decantation, filtration and adsorption on activated carbon. These wastes are brown colored effluents and have a residual chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the range of 1800 to 3500 mgO(2) L-1, which cannot be further eliminated with physicochemical processes. The UV/H2O2 treatments were carried out under monochromatic irradiation at 254 nm using a thermostated reactor equipped with a mercury vapor lamp located in an axial position. The effects of initial H2O2 concentration, initial COD, pH and temperature have been studied in order to determine the optimum conditions for maximum color and COD removals. The experimental results reveal the suitability of the UV/H2O2 process for both removal of high levels of COD and effectively decolorizing the solution. In particular, 95% of color removal and 90% of COD removal were obtained under conditions of pH = 5 and 32 degrees C using 2.75 g H2O2 g(-1) COD L-1 during 6 h of UV-irradiation. The treatment is unaffected by pH over the range 2 to 9. In addition, the COD removal is improved by increasing the temperature, whereas the color removal has not been affected by this parameter. The results show that the hydroxyl radicals generated from the catalytic decomposition of H2O2 by UV-irradiation of the solution could be successfully used to mineralize the organics contained in IWW. The mineralization of the organics seems to occur in three main sequential steps: the first is the rapid decomposition of tannins leading to aromatic compounds, which are confirmed by the decolorization of the IWW; the second step corresponds to the oxidation of aromatics leading to aliphatic intermediates, which occurs by the cleavage of an aromatic ring, and is established by the removal of aromatics, and the final step is the slow oxidation of the aliphatic intermediates, which is measured by the COD removal.