José Luis Casas López

Economic evaluation of a combined photo-Fenton/MBR process using pesticides as model pollutant. Factors affecting costs.

The aim of this paper is to carry out an economic assessment on a solar photo-Fenton/MBR combined process to treat industrial ecotoxic wastewater. This study focuses on the impact of the contamination present in wastewater, the photochemical oxidation, the use of an MBR as biological process and the plant size on operating and amortization costs. As example of ecotoxic pollutant, a mixture of five commercial pesticides commonly used in the Mediterranean area has been used, ranging from 500 mg/L to 50mg/L, expressed as dissolved organic carbon concentration. The economic evaluation shows that (i) the increase in pollution load does not always involve an increase in photo-Fenton costs because they also depend on organic matter mineralization; (ii) the use of an MBR process permits lower photochemical oxidation requirements than other biological treatments, resulting in approximately 20% photo-Fenton cost reduction for highly polluted wastewater; (iii) when pollution load decreases, the contribution of reactant consumption to the photo-Fenton process costs increase with regard to amortization costs; (iv) 30% total cost reduction can be gained treating higher daily volumes, obtaining competitive costs that vary from 1.1-1.9 €/m(3), depending on the pollution load.

Phenomenological study and application of the combined influence of iron concentration and irradiance on the photo-Fenton process to remove micropollutants

The presence of low concentrations of persistent pollutants in waters (μg/L or ng/L), also called micropollutants, brings as a consequence the need to apply advanced oxidation treatments for their removal. The successful application of solar-driven photo-Fenton to treat highly polluted wastewaters (g/L and mg/L of pollutants) has prompted its application to lowly polluted effluents. However, a decrease in contaminant concentration may involve an alteration in the intrinsic process phenomenon, which until now has only been widely studied at the milligram-per-litre level or higher with this process. The aim of this research was to study the combined influence of the operating variable (iron concentration) and the environmental variable (irradiance) and application on the photo-Fenton process at pH2.8 when removing micropollutants. For this purpose, experimentation was carried out at laboratory and pilot plant scales with a biocide mixture of acetamiprid (ACTM), thiabendazole (TBZ) and imazalil (IMZ) (100 μg/L each) as the model pollutant. Results indicated that above 15 WUV/m(2) and a light path length of 5 cm (the most commonly used path for this type of application) iron concentration limited the process and there was irradiance excess under these conditions. On the other hand, and given the circumstances of irradiance excess, a higher light path length (10 cm) was assessed. Results showed that path lengths wider than 5 cm are recommended since more wastewater volume could be treated with a higher process rate per surface unit.