Solar photo catalytic treatment of oil produced water using zinc oxide

The research study is based on photo catalytic technologies coupled with nano chemical for the treatment of oil produced water. Application of solar energy for the treatment of oil produced is considered to a best choice due to its abundance availability throughout the year round in the Sultanate of Oman. In recent years, the photo catalytic process has shown to have a great potential as a low-cost, sustainable treatment and environmentally friendly technology. Heterogeneous photocatalysis has been successfully used to destruct bacteria, viruses, decompose organic matter and there are applications in factories to irrigate trees and also applied in the petroleum industry. In this present research, zinc oxide is used as photocatalyst because of its high photo catalytic activity, photo-stability, broad band gap and less toxic and its photo catalytic activity to degrade organic pollutants in oil produced water was investigated. As per the experimental study it was observed that ZnO used as a potential catalyst in treating wastewater. The performance of the ZnO was studied by different parameters such as, pH, TDS, conductivity, salinity, DO, TOC and COD. The results showed that TOC was decreased in first three hours and thereafter it remains stable and hence 3 hours is considered as optimum reaction time. However it was observed continuous decrease in COD and turbidity for five hours of exposure under solar radiation.