Advanced treatment of phenol by H 2 O 2 /UV/activated carbon coupling: Influence of homogeneous and heterogeneous phase

In this work, a heterogeneous catalytic wet peroxide process combining activated carbon (AC) and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 )/ultraviolet radiation was applied for the aqueous‐phase removal of phenol. The influence of the pH and peroxide concentration were determined according to a factorial plan. The kinetic contribution of radical mechanisms ( δ H O °) was estimated using a radical scavenger (tert‐butyl alcohol). The degradation kinetics was modelled by a global pseudo‐first‐order kinetic model based on the sum of the effects during the treatment process. The results showed that these two variables significantly affected the percentage removal. The peroxide concentration exerted a positive effect (i.e., as the H 2 O 2 concentration increased, the percentage removal also increased). Additionally, as the pH value increased, the degradation accelerated, and the kinetic constant (k homogeneous ) increased from 0.00938 min −1 to 0.02772 min −1 . The results obtained in the presence of AC demonstrated the ability of AC to ameliorate the degradation of phenol; for example,δ h e t e r o g e n e o u swas 45.69 % to 41.35 %.