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

MAIA LESCANO; NERINA FUSSONI; EDUARDO GABRIEL VIDAL; CRISTINA S. ZALAZAR

Cusco

Conferencia; 5th Iberoamerican Conference on Advanced Oxidation Technologies; 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 best conditions to carry it out and it is imperative the application of bioassays at the end of treatment to ensure effluent safety. In the present work, UV/H2O2 process was applied to evaluate the degradation of a wastewater coming from a pesticide formulation plant. In addition, the process was optimized and validated employing the RSM methodology. The obtained optimal conditions were: pH = 6.05 and R=4.66 (ratio between initial H2O2 and initial TOC concentrations) rendering a predicted TOC conversion of 74.70 %.The experimental run under these conditions led to a TOC conversion of 78% (8 hours) and pesticides were completely removed. Also, the phytotoxicity assay showed that, at the end of the treatment, the sample was not phytotoxic. It can be concluded that the process is efficient to treat this kind of wastewaters.