Comparing treatment methods that remove color from the effluent of an Organized Industrial District (OID)

Abstract

This study investigates the treatability, in terms of color removal, of an effluent taken from an Organized Industrial District wastewater treatment plant located in Bursa, western Turkey. To remove the color, chemical coagulation, Fenton and Fenton-like oxidation, ozonation, adsorption, and membrane processes were employed, and the results were compared. In coagulation experiments, maximum color removal (87.4%) was obtained at pH 12.2 with a dose of 240 mg/L MgCl₂+Ca(OH)₂. Fenton and Fenton-like oxidation processes showed high color removal efficiencies (93.1 and 80%, respectively) from the evaluated effluents. The best color removal (93.6%) in this study was achieved by an ozonation process at a dose of 8 g/L-min ozone with a pH of 12 and a contact time of 3 min. In addition to the color removal efficiencies for the applied processes, their associated operating costs were also calculated.

Keywords:

• Adsorption
• Chemical coagulation
• Color removal
• Fenton and Fenton-like oxidation
• Membrane
• Organized Industrial District wastewater
• Ozonation

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge for the editing and financial support of the Uludag University Research Projects Department for this study (Project No. KUAP(M)-2013/47).