Unraveling the mechanisms behind Advanced Reduction Processes as an innovative purification method for industrial wastewater

Pharmaceuticals, halogenated organic compounds (HOC's) and some inorganic compounds are three classes of pollutants that are persistent and toxic in the environment. Many of the current water treatment techniques for contaminated water, such as ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and nanofiltration/ultrafiltration, only concentrate these contaminants without degrading or eliminating them.A novel and interesting technology called Advanced Reduction Processes (ARPs), which has only recently been described in the literature, will lead to the transformation of target contaminants into more innocuous or simple products. ARPs use reductive radicals to degrade pollutants. Highly halogenated organics are primary candidates for ARP treatment since it has been shown that organics with a large number of halogen substituents are less prone to oxidative degradation, and highly reactive in reductive reactions. Besides dehalogenation, ARPs have also been applied to reduce toxic (inorganic) compounds that exist in their highest oxidized form and thus can only be degraded by reduction.The general aim of this project is to investigate ARPs for the degradation of halogenated and non-halogenated organic compounds. The first aim is to identify the mechanisms behind the degradation of selected components using different activator combinations. Innovative analytical tools will be developed and validated to identify the formed degradation products and unravel the reaction pathways. A second aim consists of applying a chemical engineering approach to design an ARP-based treatment process that allows evaluating the degradation kinetics in a chemical reactor design.

Publication year:2021

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