Designing and operating a pilot plant for purification of industrial wastewater from toxic organic compounds by utilizing solar energy

The aim of the present project was to design and operate a solar reactor system and to analyze its performance for the removal of different types of toxic organic pollutants (e.g., synthetic methyl violet dye and phenol) from water with titanium dioxide as the photocatalyst. Various operating parameters were studied to investigate the behavior of the designed reactor like initial substrate concentration, loading of catalyst, pH of solution, and H 2 O 2 concentration. The operating parameters were optimized to give higher efficiency to the reactor performance. Results showed that a photocatalysis system, operating at optimum conditions, offered within one hour of operation degradation up to 95.27% for synthetic dye, while a conversion of 99.95% was obtained in three hours. With phenol, degradation was up to 80.0% and 98.0%, respectively. The removal of TOC for the two toxic materials was also at high levels. This confirmed the feasibility of the designed solar system. The kinetics of dye degradation was first order with respect to dye concentration and could be well described by Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. A preliminary design of a solar photocatalysis system as an alternative treatment method for wastewater effluents from an Iraqi textile mill was introduced.