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Ozonation and ultrafiltration for the treatment of olive mill wastewaters: effect of key operating conditions and integration schemes

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Abstract

With the objective of reaching suitable techniques for olive mill wastewater treatment, ozonation and ultrafiltration were studied individually and combined. A continuous reactor was run for the treatment of a phenolic mixture mimicking an actual olive mill wastewater (OMW) by ozonation. The effect of the main operating parameters was analysed (pH, liquid flow rate and ozone inlet concentration). The increase of pH and ozone dose improved ozonation efficiency. As expected, the highest residence time led to higher steady-state degradation (35 % of chemical oxygen demand (COD) abatement). Even if the rise on ozone inlet gas concentration was able to remove COD in a higher extent, it should be taken into consideration that with the lowest oxidant load (15 g O3/m3), the maximum steady-state biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5)/COD ratio was reached which would reduce the process costs. These operating conditions (pH 9, 1 mL/min of liquid flow rate and 15 g O3/m3) were applied to an actual OMW leading to 80 % of phenolic content abatement and 12 % of COD removal at the steady state. Regarding ultrafiltration, it was concluded that the best total phenolic content (TPh) and COD abatement results (55 and 15 %) are attained for pH 9 and using a transmembrane pressure drop of 1 bar. Among the integration schemes that were tested, ultrafiltration followed by ozonation was able to reach 93 and 20 % of TPh and COD depletion, respectively. Moreover, this sequence led to an effluent with a BOD5/COD ratio of about 0.55 which means that it likely can be posteriorly refined in a municipal wastewater treatment plant.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia by the financial support under the contract (PTDC/EQU-ERQ/113308/2009). Rui C. Martins gratefully acknowledges Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for the IFCT contract (IF/00215/2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigação em Engenharia dos Processos Químicos e Produtos da Floresta (CIEPQPF), Group on Environment, Reaction, Separation and Thermodynamics (GERST), Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Pólo II-Rua Sílvio Lima, 3030-790, Coimbra, Portugal

    Rui C. Martins, Ana M. Ferreira, Licínio M. Gando-Ferreira & Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira

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  1. Rui C. Martins
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  2. Ana M. Ferreira
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  3. Licínio M. Gando-Ferreira
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  4. Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira
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Correspondence to Rui C. Martins.

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Responsible editor: Bingcai Pan

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Martins, R.C., Ferreira, A.M., Gando-Ferreira, L.M. et al. Ozonation and ultrafiltration for the treatment of olive mill wastewaters: effect of key operating conditions and integration schemes. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 15587–15597 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4766-2

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