Use of organic fertilizers in solar photo-Fenton process as potential technology to remove pineapple processing wastewater in Costa Rica

Dayatri Vanessa Bolaños Picado; Mario Masis Mora; Esteban Duran Herrera; Luís Fernando Pérez Mercado; Núria López Vinent; Alberto Cruz Alcalde; María Mercedes Alvarez Caero; Carlos Esteban Rodríguez Rodríguez; Carmen Sans Mazón

doi:10.12688/openreseurope.14997.1

Use of organic fertilizers in solar photo-Fenton process as potential technology to remove pineapple processing wastewater in Costa Rica

Open Res Eur. 2022 Sep 1:2:105. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.14997.1. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Dayatri Vanessa Bolaños Picado¹, Mario Masis Mora², Esteban Duran Herrera¹, Luís Fernando Pérez Mercado³, Núria López Vinent⁴, Alberto Cruz Alcalde⁴, María Mercedes Alvarez Caero³, Carlos Esteban Rodríguez Rodríguez², Carmen Sans Mazón⁴

Affiliations

¹ Escuela de Ingeniería Química, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José de Costa Rica, 11501-2060, Costa Rica.
² Centro de Investigación en Contaminación Ambiental, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José de Costa Rica, 11502, Costa Rica.
³ Centro de Aguas y Saneamiento Ambiental, Universidad Mayor de San Simón de Cochabamba, Cochabamba, JV44+W59, Bolivia.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.

Abstract

Background: This work studied the use of the organic fertilizers DTPA-Fe and EDDS-Fe as iron chelates for solar driven photo-Fenton process at natural pH. This process was proposed to investigate its performance on removing a mixture of agrochemicals (propiconazole, imidacloprid and diuron) from pineapple processing wastewater to obtain a suitable effluent to be reused in the agricultural sector. Methods: Experiments were carried out in a solar simulator with a stirred cylindric photoreactor, with a volume of 150 mL and controlled temperature (20°C). The first set of experiments was carried out with ultrapure water to determine optimal iron and H ₂O ₂ concentrations. The second was performed with simulated wastewater of pineapple processing. Results: The optimized operational conditions for both iron complexes were 10 mg L ^-1 of Fe (III) and 25 mg L ^-1 of H ₂O ₂, since more than 80% of micropollutants (MP) (at an initial concentration of 1 mg L ^-1 of each compound) were removed in only 20 min with both DTPA-Fe and EDDS-Fe. The effect of organic matter and inorganic salts on radicals scavenging and chelates stability was also investigated in the experiments performed with synthetic pineapple processing wastewater. The results disclosed differences depending on the iron complex. Nitrites were the principal component influencing the tests carried out with EDDS-Fe. While carbonates at low concentration only significantly affected the experiments performed with DTPA-Fe, they were the major influence on the MPs removal efficiency decrease. In contrast, the presence of Ca ²⁺ and Mg ²⁺ only influence on this last one. Finally, the results of phytotoxicity disclosed the suitability of treated effluent to be reused in the agricultural sector. Conclusions: This work demonstrated that solar powered photo-Fenton catalysed by iron fertilizer EDDS is a suitable technology for depolluting water streams coming from pineapple processing plants at circumneutral pH, and its subsequent reuse for crop irrigation.

Keywords: Organic fertilizers; Pineapple wastewater; Solar-based process; Wastewater treatment.

Grants and funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 690618 (Knowledge for Pesticides Control [KNOWPEC]).