Bio-based substances from urban waste as auxiliaries for solar photo-Fenton treatment under mild conditions

JUAN GOMIS; LUCIANO CARLOS; ANTONIO ARQUES; ANTONIO CARLOS TEIXEIRA

Almeria

Congreso; 3rd European Conference on Environmental Applications of Advanced Oxidation Processes (EAAOP3); 2013

Soluble bio-based organic substances (SBO) isolated from urban wastes are promising materials to be employed in photochemical processes for wastewater treatment. These substances have basic structural similarities with some substances found in natural organic matter (NOM), such as humic and fulvic acids, which play an important role in the photochemical pathway for the self-remediation of ecosystems. Preliminary results have shown that although these materials are able to catalyze the photodegradation of some pollutants, this is, at least partly, compensated by a strong screen effect. However the use of SBO as a complexing agent for iron in Fenton processes, seems promising, due to the fact that these materials contain functional groups with strong ability to chelate metals, In particular, SBO could be employed to expand the applications of these treatments to pH conditions where iron ions are normally not soluble. In this study the role of the operational parameter were investigated, in particular pH and SBO concentration, in a photo-Fenton treatment under simulated sunlight but also at pilot scale under solar irradiation.