Potential use of foundry sand and furnace blast sand for fabrication of visibly active composite to promote circular economy/waste management for treating real agro‐industrial wastewater

Abstract

A two‐step process of coagulation/flocculation followed by a simultaneous dual process (photocatalysis + photo‐Fenton) is developed to treat real pulp and paper (P and P) industry wastewater. The rigid stout color wastewater was treated using a sunlight‐responsive and cost‐effective Fe‐TiO2 composite using recirculating photoreactor with a total working volume of 4 L. The key point of this study is that the treatment is done in very less time (90 min), and it incorporates the idea of circular economy, as the composite is fabricated out of industrial rejects. The further intensification of the process was done by proper process optimization of both approaches. With an initial concentration of stout color (0.78 AU) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) (2200 mg/L), the optimized conditions gave a good reduction in % color and % COD, that is, 64.1% and 41.8% (1280 mg/L) after coagulation/flocculation and 89.74% and 53.12% (600 mg/L) after dual, respectively. The composite was characterized by using various techniques like field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM)/energy dispersive X‐ray analysis (EDAX), UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV–vis DRS), and X‐ray diffraction (XRD) to check the catalyst composition, complexes formed between Fe‐TiO2, and the catalyst intactness in both fresh and 50 times recycled composite. A trapping study was also performed using various quenchers to confirm that OH• plays a major role in the present study among other radicals produced where 55–60% drop in color removal was seen. In order to foresee the commercial use of this study, the process' cost was also estimated. Practitioner points Industrial waste products were used to fabricate inert support that promoted the idea of circular economy/waste management. Iron from the waste used to execute photo‐Fenton process along with forming Fe‐TiO2 complex to make it visibly active composite. Enhanced production of OH radicals facilitated removal of stout color and COD from the real pulp and paper industry wastewater in just 90 min. Coagulation/flocculation followed by dual technique proved to be the best approach out of three different approaches applied. Composite showed excellent durability even after 50 recycles.