Techno-economic studies for a pilot-scale Bi12TiO20 based photocatalytic system for pharmaceutical wastewater treatment: From laboratory studies to commercial-scale applications

Abstract

This work proposes an appropriate method for cleaning pharmaceutical wastewater from hazardous compounds like cephalosporin and also conducts innovative full design criteria for commercial-scale applications associated with full economic evaluation. The sillenite Bi12TiO20 (BTO) was used as a catalyst in this approach, and it was chosen based on previous studies. First, the BTO catalyst was characterized and tested before proposing it as an alternative solution. The catalyst BTO has been characterized using various characterization techniques such as XRD, TEM, BET, XPS and DRS. This catalyst was found to be a nanoparticles sillenite type with a space group cubic structure type I23 agglomerated in grains form with particle size around 3–15 μm and a surface area of 8.84 m2/g; its bandgap was found to be at ~2.9 eV. After characterization, the catalyst BTO was tested for the removal of three different antibiotics, which are Cefixime (CFX), Cefaclor (CFC), Cefuroxime (CFRM), and it has shown efficient photocatalytic activity with rates of 94%, 81%, and 69.71% within 210 min for CFX, CFC and CFRM; respectively. After that, a photocatalytic treatment system was proposed as a large scale of the previous process. An integrated economic assessment for treating 1 L/min antibiotic polluted effluents using this pilot scale design was presented to examine the system's commercial potential. The findings of batch experimental testing and pilot-scale designs proved the viability of employing BTO sillenite in a large-scale demonstration for pharmaceutical wastewater treatment as a sustainable and cost-effective photocatalytic system.