Performance Analysis of Various Advanced Oxidation Processes on COD Removal from Raw Petroleum Refinery Effluent

Abstract

Objectives : This comparative study investigated various methods of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) that were separately conducted for treating raw petroleum refinery effluent regarding chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal.Methods : Fenton, photo-Fenton, TiO2, ZnO, TiO2/Ultra violet (UV), and ZnO/UV were performed individually for measuring the effect of light irradiation, treatment time, pH, catalysts dosage, and light source on the profile of COD values.Results and Discussion : The experimental data of this work showed that the dependency on the light exposure in heterogeneous photo-catalytic reaction using TiO2 and ZnO is higher than that of homogeneous photo-Fenton technique. The optimum operating conditions in heterogeneous system occurred at 100 min of oxidation time, pH 5, and catalyst dosage 1 g/L that resulted in 21.8, 20.68, 60.9, and 55.17% of COD removal for TiO2, ZnO, TiO2/UV, and ZnO/UV, respectively. In contrast, both Fenton and photo-Fenton experienced their highest performance at pH 4 by obtaining 44.2 and 59.77% of COD removal, respectively. Eventually, kinetic study indicated that COD degradation can be well expressed by second-order pattern that reached higher correlation coefficient values by 0.999 and 0.998 for TiO2/UV and TiO2, respectively.Conclusions : Overall, it could be assumed that AOPs are reliable techniques to purify raw and complex raw industrial effluents.