Solar photocatalytic biodegradability of saline water: Optimization using RSM and ANN

Natural sunlight assisted TiO2 photocatalysis was employed for the treatment of pollutants present in the seawater. A batch experimental studies were carried out by varying the dosage of the photocatalyst between 1 and 4 g/L of the seawater. The performance of the photocatalytic reaction was evaluated by measuring the chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total organic carbon (TOC) with respective to the reaction time. The biodegradability (BOD/COD) was optimized along with other parameters using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Artificial Neural Network-Genetic Algorithm (ANN-GA). The maximum percentage removal efficiencies of COD, BOD and TOC for experimental runs was 85.7, 31.5, and 83.2%, respectively. The maximum biodegradability (BOD/COD) for experimental runs was found to be 0.072. The optimized predicted values of the biodegradability and other parameters obtained through RSM and ANN-GA were COD = 84.6, 84.7%; BOD = 28.7, 29.2%; TOC = 83.9, 78.3%; and Biodegradability = 0.069, 0.07, respectively. The predicted values were found to be in good agreement with the experimental values.