Numerical Kinetic and Hydrodynamic Study of Advanced Oxidation Process for a Dye Degradation in a Fluidized Bed Reactor

Abstract

Organic contaminants in industrial wastewater are mostly non-biodegradable, so advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) should be used as a promising alternative for conventional treatment processes. In this investigation, degradation of an organic dye was studied in a fluidized bed reactor, using Fenton heterogeneous process. Application of fluidized bed reactor in this process makes it more effective because of high mass transfer and turbulence rate. Pyrite is a natural mineral ironstone which is abundant on earth and is known as a sustainable catalyst for AOPs. In the first part of this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was prepared, which showed a good agreement with the experimental results in dye removal efficiency and hydrodynamics of the reactor. In the second part of the study, a kinetic model was developed for evaluating the hydrodynamic effects on the heterogeneous Fenton reaction in a fluidized bed reactor. Unlike the CFD model, the provided kinetic model does not contain the momentum and mass transfer balances. The CFD results were more similar to the experiment results than the kinetic model. It showed that some of the components that were involved in this process had smaller eddy dissipation rate compared to the kinetic rate.