Scaling-up of Reactors for the Homogeneous Photo-Fenton Degradation of a Herbicide

LEANDRO O. CONTE; AGUSTINA V. SCHENONE; ORLANDO M. ALFANO

Congreso; 9th European meeting on Solar Chemistry and Photocatalysis: Environmental Applications (SPEA); 2016

A scaling-up study of the homogeneous photo-Fenton degradation of herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is presented. First, different sources of iron were studied: sulphate, oxalate and citrate complexes. The results were evaluated by means of photonic and quantum efficiencies of degradation. The ferrioxalate system presented the best performance for conditions of pH = 5. Consequently, a kinetic model derived from a simplified reaction sequence is proposed using the ferrioxalate complex for pH 5. For this purpose, a lab-scale reactor with artificial sunlight was employed. Kinetic parameters were estimated and the validated kinetic model was used to predict temporal variations of the concentrations of 2,4-D, 2,4-dichlorophenol (main reaction intermediate), hydrogen peroxide and oxalate ion in a pilot-plant solar reactor.