Integration of Advanced Oxidation Technologies and Biological Processes: Recent Developments, Trends, and Advances

Abstract

The greatest challenge of today's wastewater treatment technology is to optimize the use of biological and chemical wastewater treatment processes. The choice of the process and/or integration of the processes depend strongly on the wastewater characteristics, concentrations, and the desired efficiencies. It has been observed by many investigators that the coupling of a bioreactor and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) could reduce the final concentrations of the effluent to the desired values. However, optimizing the total cost of the treatment is a challenge, as AOPs are much more expensive than biological processes alone. Therefore, an appropriate design should not only consider the ability of this coupling to reduce the concentration of organic pollutants, but also try to obtain the desired results in a cost effective process. To consider the total cost of the treatment, the residence time in biological and photochemical reactors, the kinetic rates, and the capital and operating costs of the reactors play significant roles. In this study, recent developments and trends (1996-2003) on the integration of photochemical and biological processes for the degradation of problematic pollutants in wastewater have been reviewed. The conditions to get the optimum results from this integration have also been considered. In most of the studies, it has been shown that the integrated processes were more efficient than individual processes. However, slight changes in the configuration of the reactors, temperature, pH, treatment time, concentration of the oxidants, and microorganism's colonies could lead to a great deviation in results. It has also been demonstrated that the treatment cost in both reactors is a function of time, which changes by the flow rate. The minimum cost in the coupling of the processes cannot be achieved unless considering the best treatment time in chemical and biological reactors individually.

Use of glycosides extracted from the fique (Furcraea sp.) in wastewater treatment for textile industry

“…7) in the COD values (a = 0.05; P \ 0.001). The effluents derived from the dyeing processes contain non-biodegradable and dissolved compounds which must be removed via a tertiary treatment because previous biological and physicochemical processes are not able to reach effluent standards (Tabrizi and Mehrvar 2004;Vidal et al 2004;Rajkumar and Kim 2006;Vilaseca et al 2010). The results for total color removal with coagulant and DFJ (92 %) are similar to those reported by Fan et al (2007) who achieved a removal rate of 94 % using a flocculation aid along with coagulant salt.…”

Estrogenicity patterns in the Swiss midland river Lützelmurg in relation to treated domestic sewage effluent discharges and hydrology

“…Using an experimental approach, Ternes et al [17] showed that the breakdown of estrogens is dependent on incubation time, a common process for micropollutants [18,19]. Recently, estrone removal across a set of 16 independent STW was shown to be positively associated with the HRT [3] (but see also [15]).…”

Kinetic modeling of aqueous phenol degradation by UV/H2O2 process

“…As a result, the coupling of Eqs. (5), (6), (8), and (9) with the four new molar balance equations (13)- (16) along with Eqs. (11) and (12) was the new dynamic model for the phenol degradation, where phenol intermediates were taken into account.…”