(21d) Chemical Degradation of PCE Residues: AN Useful TOOL for ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION

Chemical substances used in many of the industrial applications, are recalcitrant to conventional wastewater treatment process such as: aerobic, anaerobic treatment or chemical oxidation with chlorine or ozone. The development of Advanced Oxidation Process (AOPs) and Fenton like Process, become an alternative process for hazard and pollution reduction in wastewater from many industrial processes.

Fenton Chemistry has been proved as an effective method for the degradation of Halogen-Organic compounds such as TCE and PCE. This method is useful tool for the decontamination of many bacteriostatic or bactericide substances used in biotechnological process.

In the present work, PCE residues generated in a fractional distillation process at atmospheric pressure were degraded applying the Destructive Fenton Oxidation Process. Experiments at laboratory scale were conducted at 25 °C with hydrogen peroxide per iron II (ferrous) sulphate feed ratio of 5 and atmospheric pressure. It was observed a high reaction yield and an increase of concentration of chloride ions, as was expected; which it indicates the reaction proceeds as desired. After the process this substance was not detectable by TLC or HPLC; only for a reagent feed ratio of 2.0 it show a small quantity of the substance in the effluent, upper values of it offer a best destruction of the substance, adding periodically small volumes of hydrogen peroxide.