Study and optimization of the UV/H2O2 process to treat contaminated wastewater coming from a pesticide formulation plant

LESCANO, MAIA; FUSONI, N.; VIDAL, E.; C.S. ZALAZAR

Conferencia; 5th Iberoamerican Conference on Advanced Oxidation Technologies (V CIPOA); 2022

A few works deal with real wastewaters treatment by UV/H2O2process, especially those coming from different production plants.In addition, it is important to optimize the process to find the bestconditions to carry it out and it is imperative the application ofbioassays at the end of treatment to ensure effluent safety. In thepresent work, UV/H2O2 process was applied to evaluate thedegradation of a wastewater coming from a pesticide formulationplant. In addition, the process was optimized and validatedemploying the RSM methodology. The obtained optimal conditionswere: pH = 6.05 and R=4.66 (ratio between initial H2O2 and initialTOC concentrations) rendering a predicted TOC conversion of74.70 %.The experimental run under these conditions led to aTOC conversion of 78% (8 hours) and pesticides were completelyremoved. Also, the phytotoxicity assay showed that, at the end ofthe treatment, the sample was not phytotoxic. It can be concludedthat the process is efficient to treat this kind of wastewaters.