Abstract
The objective of this work was to study the suitability of catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) for the treatment of olive mill wastewater (OMW) using using prepared titanium dioxide (TiO2)nanoparticles. Experiments were performed using high pressure reactor (Parr reactor) at elevated temperatures and an initial oxygen partial pressure of 10 bars.The influence of the operational variables such as reactiontem perature, initial pH value, amount and type of catalyst, and retention time was established. It was observed that the mineralization of oil mill effluent was markedly affected by the initial reaction temperature and operating pH. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) were reduced by 84.22 and 81.19 % respectively, at optimum operating condition, i.e. pH = 6 and TiO2 dose= 4 g/L within 1 hour. The contents of lignin, phenol and polyphenolic compounds were also decreased to 97.58,94.77 and 84.24 %, respectively, within the same reaction time. The results showed the possibility of using CWAO technique as a pretreatment step of OMW.
Keywords
- Catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO)
- olive milleffluent
- wastewater treatment.
