Optimisation of chemical oxygen demand removal from landfill leachate by sonocatalytic degradation in the presence of cupric oxide nanoparticles

Sonophotocatalytic degradation of malachite green in aqueous solution using six competitive metal oxides as a benchmark

A comparison study examines six different metal oxides (CuO, ZnO, Fe3O4, Co3O4, NiO, and α-MnO2) for the degradation of malachite green dye using four distinct processes. These processes are as follows: sonocatalysis (US/metal oxide), sonocatalysis under ultra-violet irradiation (US/metal oxide/UV), sonocatalysis in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (US/metal oxide/H2O2), and a combination of all these processes (US/metal oxide/UV/H2O2). The effective operating parameters, such as the dosage of metal oxide nanoparticles (MONPs), the type of the process, and the metal oxides’ efficiency order, were studied. At the same reaction conditions, the sonophotocatalytic is the best process for all six MOsNPs, CuO was the better metal oxide than other MOsNPs, and at the sonocatalysis process, ZnO was the best metal oxide in other processes. It was found that the metal oxide order for sonocatalytic process is CuO > α-MnO2 ≥ ZnO > NiO ≥ Fe3O4 ≥ Co3O4 within 15–45 min. The order of (US/metal oxide/UV) process is ZnO ≥ NiO ≥ α-MnO2 > Fe3O4 ≥ CuO ≥ Co3O4 within 5–40 min. The order of (US/ MOsNPs/ H2O2) process is ZnO ≥ CuO ≥ α-MnO2 ≥ NiO > Co3O4 > Fe3O4 within 5–20 min. The maximum removal efficiency order of the sonophotocatalytic process is ZnO ≥ CuO > α-MnO2 > NiO > Fe3O4 ≥ Co3O4 within 2–8 min. The four processes degradation efficiency was in the order US/MOsNPs ˂ US/MOsNPs/UV ˂ US/MOsNPs/H2O2 ˂ (UV/Ultrasonic/MOsNPs/H2O2). Complete degradation of MG was obtained at 0.05 g/L MONPs and 1 mM of H2O2 using 296 W/L ultrasonic power and 15 W ultra-violet lamp (UV-C) within a reaction time of 8 min according to the MOsNPs type at the same sonophotocatalytic/H2O2 reaction conditions. The US/metal oxide/UV/H2O2 process is inexpensive, highly reusable, and efficient for degrading dyes in colored wastewater.

Graphical abstract

Application of ultrasound irradiation in landfill leachate treatment

Landfilling is known to be the most widely used method in municipal solid waste management in many countries. Landfill leachate containing different recalcitrant compounds are recognized to contaminate the soil and water and accordingly threat both the human health and environment. A variety of chemical and biological methods have recently been employed for landfill leachate treatment, one of which is the ultrasonic process. In this review, the efficiency of the ultrasound-assisted method for leachate treatment, factors influencing the treatment process are studied by defining a search protocol. The results showed that ultrasound can reduce pollutants by creating cavitation, microstreaming, and microturbulence. Increasing turbidity in initial of irradiation time and increasing the cost of treatment are the disadvantages of using ultrasonic in leachate treatment. Moreover, ultrasound-assisted method leads to improve the leachate quality, especially the COD/BOD. Therefore, ultrasound can be considered a good pretreatment for biological processes. Although, the application of this process in combination with other treatment processes such as biological processes and advanced oxidation increases the efficiency of leachate treatment, its efficiency depends on several factors such as exploitation features and leachate quality.

A new insight into highly contaminated landfill leachate treatment using Kefir grains pre-treatment combined with Ag-doped TiO2 photocatalytic process

This study investigates the performance of the combination of biological pre-treatment with Kefir grains (KGs) and photocatalytic process using Ag-doped TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) for the simultaneous removal of toxic pollutants from landfill leachate (LFL). After 5 days of 1% (w/v) KGs pre-treatment at 37 °C, TOC, COD, NH₄⁺-N, and PO₄^3- removal rates were 93, 83.33, 70 and 88.25%, respectively. The removal efficiencies were found to be 100, 94, 62.5, 53.16 and 47.52 % for Cd, Ni, Zn, Mn and Cu, respectively. The optimal conditions of Ag-doped TiO₂ photocatalytic process were optimized using Box-Behnken design and response surface methodology (BBD-RSM) to enhance the quality of pre-treated LFL. Interestingly, Ag-doped TiO₂ photocatalytic process increases the overall removal efficiencies to 98, 96, 85 and 93% of TOC, COD, NH₄⁺-N, and PO₄^3-, respectively. Furthermore, the removal efficiency of toxic heavy metals was gradually improved. In addition, KGs and Ag-doped TiO₂ exhibited excellent recyclability showing the potential of combined biological/photocatalytic process to treat hazardous LFL.

Sonocatalytic treatment of phosphonate containing industrial wastewater intensified using combined oxidation approaches

Treatment of actual industrial wastewater is a challenging task and has not been investigated using the cavitation-based approaches significantly. In the present work, sonocatalytic degradation (catalysts as CuO and TiO₂) of phosphonate based industrial wastewater, procured from a local company, has been studied in terms of COD reduction under optimized conditions (established using initial studies involving only ultrasound) of pH as 3.2, the temperature of 32 ± 2 °C and 120 min as treatment time. The combination of ultrasound with H₂O₂ and ozone in different approaches has been investigated for maximizing the COD reduction. The optimum set of operating conditions for the sonocatalytic degradation were established as power dissipation of 90 W and catalyst loading as 0.75 g/L for CuO and 0.5 g/L for TiO₂. Use of only ultrasound resulted in COD reduction of 37.2% whereas the combination of US with different approaches resulted in higher extents of COD reduction. The combined operation of US + H₂O₂ + O₃, US + O₃ + H₂O₂ + CuO, and US + O₃ + H₂O₂ + TiO₂ resulted in the extent of COD reduction as 91.5%, 93.8%, and 95.8% respectively. Overall, it has been clearly established that maximum COD reduction is obtained for the combined operation of sonocatalysis (catalyst as TiO₂) with ozone and H₂O₂.

Assessment of landfill leachate in semi-arid climate and its impact on the groundwater quality case study: Hamedan, Iran

To evaluate environmental impacts of solid waste landfilling, groundwater quality near the MSW landfill in a semi-arid climate of Iran (Hamedan) and its leachates were analyzed. To this aim, heavy metal concentrations, COD, BOD₅, TOC, EC, NO₃^-, Cl^-, TDS, and pH of two leachate ponds (active and closed sites) as the sources of contamination as well as the shallow groundwater of the area were measured. Monthly and seasonal monitoring program of 13 sampling points in the area were designed during the period of 2014-2016. Principal components analysis has been carried out using chemical data to deduce relationship between the samples. A special statistical approach including a main factor (age of leachate) and a subfactor (distance from the source of pollutant) was designed in order to identify the landfill role on the groundwater contamination. The physicochemical analysis of the leachate characteristics confirmed a high variation in the contaminants (i.e., organic compounds, salts, and heavy metals) related to leachate age. The BOD₅/COD ratio of the active (0.73) and closed (0.77) sites ponds indicated that the leachates were in a biodegradable and unstabilized condition. The seasonal physicochemical analysis of the leachates showed that rainfall events increase the decomposition rate of the waste and affect pollutant concentration of the leachate. The proposed statistical analysis illustrated a direct relationship between the groundwater quality parameters and the leachates physicochemical characteristics.

Removing 2,4-dichlorophenol from aqueous environments by heterogeneous catalytic ozonation using synthesized MgO nanoparticles

2,4-Dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) is one of the seriously toxic chlorophenol compounds found in agricultural environments, in water disinfected by chlorine, and in outgoing effluents from the pulp and paper industries and paper manufacturing factories. This research studied the feasibility of using MgO nanoparticles (MgO-NPs) as a catalyst in the ozonation process for removing 2,4-DCP from aqueous environments under laboratory conditions. This study was conducted using a laboratory-scale semi-continuous reactor. It studied the effects of critical variables such as solution pH, ozonation time, dose of MgO-NPs and initial 2,4-DCP concentration. A statistical model of response surface model (RSM) was designed and utilized to obtain the optimum experimental conditions. Analysis of the data showed that initial concentration of 2,4-DCP and dose of MgO-NPs had the maximum effect on the response variable (percentage degradation of 2,4-DCP). Moreover, based on analysis of variance on the model, the optimum removal conditions were reaction time of 50 min, pH > 7, initial 2,4-DCP concentration of less than 50 mg/L, and an MgO-NPs dose of 0.3 mg/L. Under these optimum conditions, a removal efficiency of 99.99% was achieved. In addition, results indicated that catalytic ozonation in the presence of MgO-NPs was very efficient at removing 2,4-DCP from aqueous environments.