Inorganic carbon removal from refinery wastewater by using TiO2/ZnO/Fenton photocatalyst

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the performance of the solar photocatalyst of TiO2/ZnO/Fenton process to treat the refinery wastewater and remove inorganic carbon (IC) which potentially toxic to human, aquatic and microorganism life. Central composite design with response surface methodology was used to evaluate the relationships between operating variables for TiO2 dosage, ZnO dosage, Fe2+ dosage, H2O2 dosage, and pH to identify the optimum operating conditions. Quadratic models for inorganic carbon (IC) removal and residual iron prove to be significant with low probabilities (<0.0001). The (IC) removal rates and residual iron correspond well with the predicted models. The maximum removal rate for IC and residual iron was 92.3% and 0.013, respectively at optimum operational conditions of a TiO2 dosage (0.3 g/l), ZnO dosage (0.58 g/l), Fe2+ dosage (0.02 g/l), H2O2 dosage (2.7 g/l), and pH (7). The treatment process achieved higher degradation efficiencies for IC and reduced the treatment time comparing with other related processes.