Heterogeneous catalysts can be an efficient and economical option for olive mill wastewater (OMW) treatment by an advanced oxidation process if they could be reused. In this work, OMW was treated using a heterogeneous photo-Fenton reaction (artificial ultraviolet light/H2O2/HFeO2). For this purpose, different concentrations of HFeO2 were tested: 0.04; 0.3; 0.8; 5.0; 10.0; 20.0; 30.0, and 50.0 g/L. The following operational conditions were chosen: pH = 3.0, temperature = 20 °C, agitation rate = 700 rpm. The experimental results showed high removal percentages of the main OMW characterization parameters at 50 g/L of HFeO2: %CODremoval = 62.8%; %total phenolic compounds (TPCs) = 88.9%. These results were also compared with those of other control oxidation systems, i.e., UV, H2O2, and UV/H2O2, which provided 35.5 and 56.1%; 46.2 and 74.0%; 48.0 and 76.8% removal, respectively. In addition, the catalyst was reused three times, recovering more than 90.5% of it.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.