Produced water treatment by advanced oxidation processes

Silvia Jiménez; Mario Andreozzi; María M Micó; Mayra G Álvarez; Sandra Contreras

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.128

Produced water treatment by advanced oxidation processes

Sci Total Environ. 2019 May 20:666:12-21. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.128. Epub 2019 Feb 10.

Authors

Silvia Jiménez¹, Mario Andreozzi², María M Micó³, Mayra G Álvarez⁴, Sandra Contreras⁵

Affiliations

¹ Departament d' Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av Països Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain; R&D Department, Acciona Agua S.A.U, Parc de Negocis Mas Blau II, Avda. de les Garrigues, 22, 08820 El Prat de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials and Industrial Production (DICMAPI), University of Naples Federico II, p.le V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italy.
³ R&D Department, Acciona Agua S.A.U, Parc de Negocis Mas Blau II, Avda. de les Garrigues, 22, 08820 El Prat de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Departament d' Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av Països Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain.
⁵ Departament d' Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av Països Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain. Electronic address: sandra.contreras@urv.cat.

PMID: 30784818
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.128

Abstract

Different Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) such as photocatalysis, Fenton-based processes and ozonation were studied to include one of these technologies within an integrated solution for produced water (PW) polishing. Synthetic PW was prepared adding toluene, xylene, naphthalene, phenol, acetic and malonic acids to a seawater matrix. Despite that in all AOPs studied in this work BTEX and naphthalene were removed, the efficiency (in terms of TOC removal) of each treatment varied largely. Among these techniques, photocatalysis was found to be the less effective for the treatment of PW, as TOC removals lower than 20% were obtained for the best scenario after 4 h treatment. In the contrary, best results were obtained by ozonation combined with H₂O₂, where all the organic components were removed, including a high percentage of acetic acid, which was not abated by the rest of the AOPs studied. The optimum conditions for ozonation were 4 g h^-1 O₃ and 1500 mg L^-1 H₂O₂ at pH 10, where after 2 h a 74% of TOC removal was achieved and the acetic acid elimination was 78%. This condition enabled that ozonation process accounted for the lowest electric energy consumption per order of target compound destruction regarding total organic carbon (TOC).

Keywords: Acetic acid; Ozonation; Photo-Fenton; Photocatalysis; Sono-Fenton.