(48e) Degradation of Phenol Derivatives Using Advanced Oxidation Process in Batch and Continuous Film Reactors

Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) constitute a promising technology for the treatment of wastewaters containing refractory organics like nitrophenols which form a group of special interest due to their high toxicity and low biodegradability. The AOP techniques investigated are (i) Photolysis by UV irradiation (ii) UV assisted photo-oxidation[UV/H₂O₂], (iii) UV assisted photocatalysis [UV/ TiO₂ /H₂O₂](iv) UV assisted photocatalytic oxidation [UV/TiO₂/H₂O₂]and (iv) Photo-Fenton [UV/H₂O₂/Fe²⁺] oxidation. These processes were investigated in a batch photoreactor and continuous flow cascade film reactor. The relative efficiency of these processes and the influence of process parameters like pH, pollutant concentration and photocatalyst dosing on the overall degradation of the substrate are evaluated.

The obtained results show that the photo-Fenton process has maximum efficiency in oxidative degradation of nitrophenols followed by UV assisted photo-oxidation, UV assisted photocatalytic oxidation, UV assisted photocatalysis and photolysis. The photo-Fenton oxidation process gave the maximum degradation efficiency of greater than 95% in both batch and continuous reactors. The obtained results show that the studied AOPs had maximum efficiency degradation at pH = 4.6. The pollutants concentration decay profile has been used to determine the kinetic parameters which indicates that the processes follows first order process.