Enhanced removal of refractory pollutant from aniline aerofloat wastewater using combined vacuum ultraviolet and ozone (VUV/O3) process

Aerofloats, such as aniline aerofloat ((C 6 H 5 NH) 2 PSSH), are extensively employed for collection activities in wastewater particularly in cases where minerals are in flotation. Although this aniline aerofloat has efficient collection properties, they are ordinarily biologically persistent chemicals in which case their residual, as well as their byproducts, pose great environmental risks to water and soils. In this study, the removal efficiency of aniline aerofloat (AAF) by a combined vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and ozone (O 3 ) process (VUV/O 3 ) was evaluated. Furthermore, the impacts of pH, O 3 , the concentration of AAF and coexisting ions (SiO 3 2- , CO 3 2- , Cl - (Na + ), SO 4 2- , Ca 2+ ) were systematically studied. The experiments revealed that, with an initial AAF of 15 mg/L, AAF removal >88% was feasible with a reaction time of 60 min, pH of 8 and O 3 of 6 g/h. The order of influence of the selected coexisting ions on the degradation of AAF by VUV/O 3 was Ca 2+ > CO 3 2- > SiO 3 2- > Cl - (Na + ) >SO 4 2- . Compared with VUV and O 3 in terms of pollutant degradation rate, VUV/O 3 showed a remarkable performance, followed by O 3 and VUV. Additionally, the degradation kinetics of AAF by the VUV/O 3 process agreed well with first-order elimination kinetics.