CATALYTIC WET-AIR OXIDATION OF HIGH-STRENGTH INDUSTRIAL WASTE-WATER

Treatment of desizing wastewater, a typical high strength industrial w astewater, by catalytic wet-air oxidation (WAO) is studied. The desizi ng wastewater sample was obtained from a large textile dyeing and fini shing plant. Experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of temperature and catalyst dosage (CuSO4 and Cu(NO3)(2)) on the pollutan t (chemical oxygen demand or COD) removal. It is observed that over 80 % of the COD removal can be realized in an hour of the catalytic WAO p rocess. A kinetic model was also developed and a two-stage, first-orde r kinetic expression was found to represent well the treatment reactio n. The correlations between the reaction rate coefficients and the tem perature and catalyst dosage were also determined.