Abstract
Phenolic compounds are priority chemicals which, when discharged in wastewater, need to be removed. Photochemical treatment has been demonstrated to be very effective for this task. This paper reports a study to assess the potential of a nano-photo-Fenton-like reagent (NFLR), based on synthesized haematite (\(\upalpha \)-\(\hbox {Fe}_{2}\hbox {O}_{3})\) nano-crystalline powder, to remove phenol from wastewater. The use of haematite nano-structures as a source of \(\hbox {Fe}^{3+}\) in NFLR provides a novel and low-cost nano-catalysis treatment of phenol wastewater. The study evaluated the effect of the initial concentration of the phenol pollutant (200–1000 mg/L), and the photo-Fenton parameters such as the nano-haematite and \(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}_{2}\) concentrations (100–800 mg/L) and pH range from 2 to 8. NFLR was able to remove about 98% of phenol in about 20 min from a solution initially containing 400 ppm of phenol. Furthermore, a Box–Behnken factorial design was applied to optimize the operating NFLR parameters. The optimum conditions for phenol removal were shown to be 398 mg/L for \(\hbox {Fe}^{3+}\), 41 mg/L for \(\hbox {H}_{2}\hbox {O}_{2}\) and 3.25 for pH. The degradation obtained using a response surface methodology is compared with that recorded experimentally at the optimized values. The NFLR, based on nano-haematite, was found to be an effective treatment for the removal of phenol from wastewater.
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Tony, M.A., Mansour, S.A., Tayeb, A.M. et al. Use of a Fenton-Like Process Based on Nano-Haematite to Treat Synthetic Wastewater Contaminated by Phenol: Process Investigation and Statistical Optimization. Arab J Sci Eng 43, 2227–2235 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-017-2632-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-017-2632-x