A. Shokri
Oct 1, 2017
Citations
0
Influential Citations
5
Citations
Journal
Archives of Hygiene Sciences
Abstract
Terephthalic acid (TPA) is commonly employed as a raw material for different petrochemical products such as polyethylene terephthalate, polyester films, bottles, and textile fibres. Also, it has been used as an additive to produce medicines, dyes, synthetic perfumes, pesticides, and other chemical compounds. The TPA and its esters are doubted to cause cancer, urinary blander, tumor promoters, endocrine disruption and renal damage (1). Thus, wastewater that holds these pollutants must be remediated before being discharged into the environment. Some techniques were used for the TPA removal such as coagulation–flocculation (2) that the contaminant is only transferred to another phase, photocatalysis (3) and supercritical water oxidation (4). The photocatalysis can be very slow, and it has not been able to remove TPA absolutely. The supercritical water oxidation needs equipment, which works under high temperature and pressure. The classic remediation methods have great operating costs, extended treatment time and secondary contamination (5), therefore A-R-T-I-C-L-EI-N-F-O A-B-S-T-R-A-C-T Article Notes: Received: Jul. 26, 2017 Received in revised form: Aug. 28, 2017 Accepted: Sep. 10, 2017 Available Online: Sep. 22, 2017 Background & Aims of the Study: One of the toxic pollutants in the wastewater of petrochemical industries is Terphetalic acid. In this study, the degradation and mineralization of Terphetalic acid in aqueous environment were studied by Ozonation and O3/ZnO processes in a semi batch reactor. Materials & Methods: This study is an experimental research on a laboratory scale. The study executed on synthetic wastewater having Terphetalic acid. The impact of operational factors such as pH, initial concentration of ZnO and Terphetalic acid was also studied. Results: Different amounts of variables were optimized for the removal of Terphetalic acid in O3/ZnO process. The optimum conditions were achieved as follows: the [ZnO]=1.20 g/l, pH at 9, and [TPA]=70 mg/l. Conclusions: The results exhibited that at the predicted optimum conditions and after 30 min of reaction, the removal of Terphetalic acid and Total Organic Carbon (TOC) was 96.9 and 44.3%, respectively. The O3/ZnO process was powerful in the removal of TPA, but it can remove the TOC to some extent.