Decomposition of Harmful Organic Compounds with Ultrasound Wave

Abstract

The water pollution by harmful organic compounds is one of the most important environmental problems now. We focused on sonochemistry which is a method of decomposing and removing these pollutants. In this study, relationship between reaction rate of sonochemistry and operational parameters (sound pressure, initial concentration and hydrophilicity of organic compounds) was investigated. Reaction rate was found to be increased with increasing sound pressure. The decomposition rates of compounds were found to increase but their pseudo first order rate constants were found to decrease with their increasing initial concentration, which suggests around half order kinetics. Finally, their reaction rates were found to increase when the smaller the hydrophilicity of decomposed compound (the greater the hydrophobicity of compound) becomes.