Abstract
Purification of water contaminated by toxic organic compounds at low and very low concentration is a quite interesting challenge from both the technical and the economical point of view. In fact, the direct destruction of organic compounds dissolved in very diluted aqueous solution is very costly and hardly achievable. To overcome this problems it was studied and developed a new water purification process which is made of three steps: a) removal of the diluted and toxic polluting compounds by adsorption on activated carbon beds operating at ambient P ant T; b) regeneration of the exhausted carbon bed with supercritical water in order to obtain a mixture of water and polluting compounds signifi-cantly more concentrated than the contaminated liquid water; c) destruction of the toxic compounds in a continuous Supercritical Water Oxidation Reactor. Step a) was studied at laboratory scale in order to obtain all the required information for modeling the adsorption operation; step b) was modeled by using literature experimental data and, step c) was validated at pilot plant scale. In all the above mentioned steps, phenol was used as representative of polluting compounds.
Highlights
Millions of tons of organic compounds are manufactured each year
To overcome this problems it was studied and developed a new water purification process which is made of three steps: 1) removal of the diluted and toxic polluting compounds by adsorption on activated carbon beds operating at ambient P ant T; 2) regeneration of the exhausted carbon bed with supercritical water in order to obtain a mixture of water and polluting compounds significantly more concentrated than the contaminated liquid water; 3) destruction of the toxic compounds in a continuous Supercritical Water Oxidation Reactor
The purpose of this paper is to develop and to describe a new process characterized by high efficiency in both water purification and destruction of polluting materials without producing any hazardous by-product
Summary
Millions of tons of organic compounds are manufactured each year. Most of these compounds are toxic, poorly biodegradable, and persistent, sometimes give biological magnification. An important class among these chemicals is aromatic chlorinated hydrocarbons such as chlorobenzene, chloronitrobenzene, poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCB), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and dioxins These chemicals contaminate very large amount of wastewater (often originated from chemical process industry both using and producing organic compounds) and drinking water (when spills or soil pollutants reach the groundwater level). Two main problems arise from this process: the regeneration of activated carbon and the ultimate disposal of polluting organic compounds. It has been demonstrated [3,4] that the Supercritical Water (SCW) can be efficiently used for regenerating the spent activated carbon bed; coherently with the fact that SCW behaves as an organic liquid solvent. The purpose of this paper is to develop and to describe a new process (obtained by properly combining an adsorption section with a SCWO section) characterized by high efficiency in both water purification and destruction of polluting materials without producing any hazardous by-product
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