Fenton and photo-Fenton treatment of distillery effluent and optimization of treatment conditions with response surface methodology

Two chemical processes, Fenton and photo‐Fenton, were tested separately for the treatment of vinasse, which was generated from an alcohol distillery process. In order to evaluate the processes effectiveness, four independent variables viz. SCOD concentration, initial pH, H2O2 and FeSO4 dosage were applied. Experiments were conducted based on a central composite design (CCD) and analyzed using response surface methodology (RSM). UV radiation for 80 min was applied in each experiment during the photo‐Fenton process. Two modified quadratic equations were used for data fitting. The most significant model terms in the processes were found to be the initial chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration and the initial pH. A higher removal efficiency was achieved in the photo‐Fenton process compared to Fenton alone. The efficiency varied from 18 to 97% for the photo‐Fenton process, while it was in the range of 5–47% for Fenton process. The R2 value of the models (R2 > 0.97) shows a very high degree of correlation between the parameters. Copyright © 2009 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.