Treatment of Sugar Industry Wastewater by Using Subcritical Water as a Reaction Media

Abstract

The sugar industry is one of the most wastewater-producing industries and it contains high content of organic and inorganic substances. Treating and reusing wastewater has significant importance because sugar industry needs to use a high volume of water. In this study, sugar industry wastewater was treated under subcritical conditions and the impacts of reaction temperature and duration over TOC removal percentage were investigated. Additionally, the impact of NaOH concentration over TOC removal percentage was examined. The highest TOC removal was obtained almost 95 % in the presence of 0.1 M of NaOH at 240 degrees C for 90 min of reaction duration. Treatment of sugar industry wastewater by subcritical water oxidation followed the second-order reaction kinetic model and the activation energy was found as 11.41 kJ/mol. Furthermore, the intermediate products were identified via GC-MS.