Ultrasound‐assisted photo‐Fenton process for treatment of pulp and paper mill wastewater and reduction of phytotoxicity

Abstract

The efficiency of classical Fenton (CF) and modified Fenton (MF) as well as photo‐Fenton processes in real wastewater treatment of pulp and paper (P&P) mill was investigated in this study. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) was chosen as the reference measurement for evaluating the treatment's efficiency. After determining the optimum parameters for each process, the effect of adding ultrasound (US) on improving treatment efficiency was examined. In addition, kinetic study and phytotoxicity analysis were conducted under optimum conditions for all processes. With pH 4, reaction time 50 min, 1.2 g/L Fe2+ and 8 g/L H2O2 dosages, the best removal efficiency (RE) of COD was determined to be 82.18% in CF process, and this rate rose to 90.1% when US was added. The best RE in MF process was 84.16% with the application of UV‐C, pH 4, reaction time 50 min, 1 g/L Fe0 and 8 g/L H2O2 doses, although it increased to 93.4% when US was applied. The greatest results in the seed germination test were achieved in US processes with 100% of germination percentage (GP) for spinach and tomato and 90% for cress. In the economic evaluation, when conducting the treatment without US, the estimated relative cost decreased in a 15 and 16%, for CF/UV‐C and CF processes respectively, whereas the CF process was 64% cheaper than the MF process in all applications. The US contributed to enhanced water treatment efficiency by having a significant synergistic impact on Fenton applications. Hence, the combination of photo‐Fenton and ultrasound to treat effluent from P&P mills proved to be an effective and promising technique.