Rotating Packed Bed Reactor Integrated with Plasma: Mass Transfer Intensification and Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

When oxygen plasma contacts with liquid, abundant reactive species are generated to degrade the contaminant. Ozone is the main reactive species in the gas phase, but only part of it is utilized during wastewater treatment owing to its low solubility. In this work, a novel rotating packed bed reactor integrated with plasma (plasma-RPB) was developed to fully utilize ozone and enhance wastewater treatment. The ozone–water mass transfer efficiency of the plasma-RPB with different liquid distributor structures was evaluated. Subsequently, a dimensionless correlation for predicting the volumetric mass transfer coefficient of the plasma-RPB with the rotating cylinder was established, and the deviation between the predicted and experimental values was within ±6%. Employing the plasma-RPB, sulfamethoxazole and TOC removal efficiency reached up to 87.6 and 82.7% within 5 min, respectively, exhibiting prominent degradation performance compared with other advanced oxidation processes. This work provides an effective route for wastewater treatment.