As part of the cultural season of the Environmental Research Center
Dr. Mukheled Amer Hussien-lecturer in the Department of Environmental Pollution-ERC presented a lecture on Tuesday, 31/12/2019 at 12:00 entitled “Integrated Technology consisting of Advanced Oxidation Process and Membrane Separation Process for the Treatment of Industrial Wastewater”. The lecturer stated that there are many chemical organic pollutants in the industrial wastewater effluents that have a high ability to resist the conventional wastewater treatment processes like (biological wastewater treatment- the most environmentally friendly and cheapest method) and thus, these pollutants can flow through those streams to be discharged into the environment. As a consequence, the environmental concern has been risen. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) as essential solution for this problem where they produce free hydroxyl radicals having a high oxidation potential to oxidize (degrade) the refractory organic pollutants either partially to form short-chain acids that are amenable to biological treatment or totally to CO2, H2O and inorganic ions as final compounds. In real applications, there are many advanced oxidation processes which each of them having advantages and disadvantages in performance. Generally, the performance of these processes can be improved when connected with membrane separation processes to produce the integrated technologies where these technologies are able to improve the quality of wastewater effluent to be in agreement with environmental standards.
An integrated technology consisting of heterogenous and homogeneous photocatalysis with membrane separation process was selected as a case study to oxidize (degrade) a selected industrial model like polyethylene glycol-a common pollutant in conventional wastewater effluent streams into the environment due to several industrial applications like food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, lubricants, antifreeze and etc. Experimental results of this technology proved that this pollutant was primarily degraded to different types of short-chain acids that can be used later due to their economic considerations or biologically treated.
