THE UV/HYDROGEN PEROXIDE PROCESS FOR TREATING INDUSTRIAL WASTES
Introduction. The application of ultraviolet (UV) light in combination with (as a catalyst for oxidation by) hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has been successful for the removal of fairly dilute organic solvents from groundwater and less successful for the removal of concentrated and possibly more variegated, complex wastes from the tomato-processing and distillery industries. The chemical reasons for the mixed results will be explored here, and the economic feasibility of the process will be reviewed.
The Process Train. FMC/Southland Environmental claims that FMC is the "largest producer of hydrogen peroxide in North America" (6:2). It makes its product available, in part, through a skid-mounted waste treatment unit that is self-contained and so ready to operate upon arrival that: "The last thing you need is to manage another time consuming construction or pilot project" (6:1). So, the process itself is not revealed.
The U. S. Navy evaluated the process for use against groundwater contamination by organics and was far more revealing about the (simple) process train (8:1). The treatment system can be in one or more "oxidation chambers;" each chamber will contain a single "high-intensity" UV lamp mounted in a quartz tube (8:1). The wastewater flows in the space between the outer chamber wall and the inner quartz tube holding the UV lamp (8:1).
FMC's version of a peroxide treatment system, which may or may not include the UV light, comes in standard sizes ranging from 1 to 20 gallons per hour, although higher flow rates and "capacities" (presumably volumes) can be made available (6:2).
In most of the studies reported here, lab chemists were attempting to determine how the process works, so the sizes were much smaller--laboratory scale, some of them being batch rather than flow-through reactors. The range appeared to be from 250 ml--rather oddly 15 cm in diam...