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Assessing the performance of uv/H 2 O 2 as a pretreatment process in TOC removal of an actual petroleum refinery wastewater and its inhibitory effects on activated sludge
Author(s) -
BustilloLecompte Ciro Fernando,
Knight Mark,
Mehrvar Mehrab
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.22180
Subject(s) - wastewater , refinery , chemistry , oil refinery , activated sludge , sewage treatment , total organic carbon , activated carbon , chromatography , pulp and paper industry , respirometry , nuclear chemistry , environmental chemistry , environmental science , environmental engineering , organic chemistry , adsorption , engineering
The treatment of a petroleum refinery wastewater is studied using a bench scale UV/H 2 O 2 photoreactor in batch mode. The average initial total organic carbon (TOC) concentration is 42 mg/L. Moreover, the initial H 2 O 2 concentrations are 345, 690, and 1023 mg/L for initial H 2 O 2 /TOC molar ratios of 2.9, 5.8, and 8.6, respectively. The results reveal that the highest treatment efficiency of 78.38 % for the removal of TOC from the refinery wastewater using the bench scale UV/H 2 O 2 photoreactor occurs at the reaction time of 45 min and a pH of 5.0. A three‐factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to verify the statistical significance of the initial H 2 O 2 /TOC molar ratio, reaction time, and pH on the bench scale UV/H 2 O 2 photoreactor. Furthermore, the respirometry analysis shows that the pretreated refinery wastewater by the UV/H 2 O 2 process is inhibitory on activated sludge (AS) microorganisms. Thus, the UV/H 2 O 2 process is found to be currently not suitable as a pretreatment process for refinery wastewater treatment at these operational conditions.