Solar photocatalytic treatment of phenol wastewater

Quantity of water use in India is very high compared to other countries. Inefficient water use by industry in India creates a lot of problems. This quantity could be reduced to a minimal by recycling the water after sufficient treatment. The available treatment processes do not aim at sufficient treatment required for recycling of water but it concentrates more on achieving the standards, hence complicating the process. Complete destruction of the contaminant is possible using inexhaustible free source of energy from sunlight thus consuming very less primary energy for its operation. Photo-catalytic experiments were carried out using laboratory photo-reactor for degradation of phenol wastewater. The experiments were carried out with 0.2 g/L of TiO ₂ catalyst for different concentration of phenol wastewater ranging from 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 ppm. It is found that complete degradation of phenol is possible in a reasonable time (ie, less than 5 h) when concentration of phenol is ≤ 100 ppm. This observation is used for design of solar collectors and to calculate its economics.