Puganeshwary Palaniandy

Pharmaceutical residues in aquatic environment and water remediation by TiO 2 heterogeneous photocatalysis: a review

The occurrence of pharmaceutical compounds in the natural water sources has been reported as early as in the year 1980. Until now, the presence of pharmaceutical compounds in the aquatic environment has been frequently reported in the literature. Moreover, increasing evidence suggests that these contaminants have posed a threat to both humans and ecosystems. In this regard, the present review paper seeks to offer an overview of this environmental issue of pharmaceutical pollution where the subject matters to be reviewed include the effects, sources and mitigation strategies of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment. Besides, a review of the fundamentals and mechanisms of heterogeneous photocatalysis technology is also presented in this paper. Heterogeneous photocatalysis is a rapidly expanding technology which has been extensively investigated and applied in wastewater treatment for the remediation of persistent pollutants such as pharmaceutical compounds during the last decade. Furthermore, the ideal photocatalyst titanium dioxide (TiO2), which can collaborate and perform well in the photocatalysis treatment process, is also discussed. The advantages and limitations associated with the application of this treatment method are summarized and discussed in details. Finally, this review paper focuses on the future trend of the photocatalysis technology and identifies the barriers and lacking parts which need to be resolved in the near future.

Review of the mechanism and operational factors influencing the degradation process of contaminants in heterogenous photocatalysis

This paper presents a review of the principles and mechanisms involved in the process of heterogenous photocatalysis. The goal of photocatalysis is to remove persistent organic pollutants as well as microorganisms present in contaminated water. With the help of a semiconductor photocatalyst, solar photons are utilised to generate electron–hole pairs in the oxidation process, forming hydroxyl and superoxide radicals. There are several types of semiconductor photocatalyst available, the most widely used being titanium dioxide (TiO2). The effects of various operating factors influencing the photocatalytic degradation of pollutants, such as pH, catalyst concentration, substrate concentration, light intensity and wavelength, and oxidising agents are discussed. Heterogenous photocatalysis technology has been used in wastewater treatment during the last decade, and has been growing in efficiency ever since. From previous studies of different applications, it will be shown that this process is simple, cost-effective, sustainable and environmentally friendly. However, there are some minor disadvantages associated with its use in water purification, which are presented in this paper.

Comparative Study of Advanced Oxidation Processes to Treat Petroleum Wastewater

Abstract This study was carried out to compare the performance of different oxidation processes, such as solar photo-Fenton reaction, solar photocatalysis by TiO2, and the combination of the two for the treatment of petroleum wastewater from Sohar Oil Refinery by a central composite design with response surface methodology. The degradation efficiency was evaluated in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) reductions. Solar photocatalysis by the TiO2/Fenton method improved the performance of the photocatalyst at neutral pH for petroleum wastewater without the need to adjust the pH during this treatment. Under acidic conditions, the solar photo-Fenton process is more efficient than solar TiO2 photocatalysis while it is less efficient under alkaline conditions. The TiO2 dosage and pH are the two main factors that improved the TOC and COD reductions in the solar photocatalysis using combined TiO2/Fenton and the solar TiO2 photocatalysis processes while the pH and H2O2 concentration are the two key factors that affect the solar photo-Fenton process.

Pharmaceutical Removal from Synthetic Wastewater Using Heterogeneous - Photocatalyst

Compound Parabolic Collecting Reactor (CPCR) was designed and used for the heterogeneous-photocatalytic treatment process. Sunray was act as an economically and ecologically sensible light source. The photocatalytic degradation of paracetamol in the synthetic wastewater by using titanium dioxide (TiO2) was investigated. The experimental results show that the paracetamol removal rates were very high and nearly equal (97.2% to 99.7%) at pH 4-7 and TiO2 concentration of 0.5-1 g/L. This implies that the photocatalytic degradation rate of paracetamol is not affected by pH range in this study as the electrostatic interaction between the TiO2 and paracetamol is not able to be developed unless a wider range of pH is set. Furthermore, the concentration of TiO2 of 0.5 g/L is too high to treat the concentration of 10 mg/L of paracetamol. Further research is needed in order to identify the optimum pH condition and a suitable correlation of concentration between TiO2 and paracetamol. Finally, the results proved that the heterogeneous-photocatalyst treatment method which associated with the application of CPCR and solar energy is able to eliminate the paracetamol from the synthetic wastewater.

Evaluation of the photocatalyst of TiO2/Fenton/ZnO to treat the petroleum wastewater

The current study aimed to evaluate the performance of employing the solar photocatalyst of TiO2/Fenton/ZnO process to treat petroleum wastewater. The operating factors such as TiO2 dosage, ZnO dosage, Fenton-reagent concentration, and pH were evaluated to identify the optimum operational conditions of the treatment process. The obtained optimum conditions were a TiO2 dosage (0.5 g L−1), ZnO dosage (0.5 g L−1), Fenton ratios 100 (1 g L−1 H2O2/0.01 g L−1 Fe2+), and pH 7. The treatment efficiencies were significantly improved by adding of ZnO/Fenton with the solar photocatalyst of TiO2 process. The removal efficiencies increased from 18% to 88% for TOC and from 24% to 61% for COD at pH 7, therefore no need to adjust pH during this treatment. The treatment time was reduced up to 150% compared with the photocatalyst of TiO2 process. Using renewable solar energy and treating with minimum chemical input make this method to be a unique treatment process for petroleum wastewater.

Shrimp pond wastewater treatment using pyrolyzed chicken feather as adsorbent

In this study, chicken feather fiber was used as a raw material to prepare a non-expensive adsorbent by pyrolysis without chemical activation. The main pollutants treated in this study were chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammoniacal nitrogen (NH3-N) from shrimp pond wastewater containing high concentrations of nutrients, which caused the eutrophication phenomenon in adjacent water. Batch adsorption studies were performed to investigate the effect of pH (5–8), mass of adsorbent (0.5–3 g), and shaking time (0.5–2 h) on the removal efficiency of COD and NH3− N. Experimental results showed that the optimum conditions were as follows: pH 5, 0.5 g of adsorbent, and 0.5 h of shaking. Under these conditions, 34.01% and 40.47% of COD and NH3-N were removed, respectively, from shrimp pond wastewater. The adsorption processes were best described by the Langmuir isotherm model for COD and NH3-N removal, with maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of 36.9 and 7.24 mg/g for COD and NH3-N, respectively. The results prov...

The potential use of rainwater as alternative source of drinking water by using laterite soil as natural adsorbent

Generally, the rainwater has low concentration of pollutants, whereby it is applicable for domestic water supply. Due to the low concentration of pollutants, further treatment such as adsorption is necessary to treat the harvested rainwater as an alternative source of drinking water supply. Therefore, this research has been carried out to determine the quality of rainwater from different types of locations, which are; rural residential area, urban residential area, agricultural area, industrial area, and open surface. The rainwater sampling was carried out from September 2014 to December 2015. The parameters that have been analysed during the sampling process are chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, heavy metals, and Escherichia coli (E.coli). The sampling results show that the rainwater provides low concentration of contaminants. Thus, it has high potential to be used as alternative source of potable and non potable water supply with a suitable treatment. Due to that, an experimental work contained o...