Treatment of Sugar Industry Wastewater by Using Subcritical Water as a Reaction Media

• Published in: ChemistrySelect (Weinheim) Vol. 8; no. 1
• Main Authors: Orak, Ceren, Öcal, Bulutcem, Yüksel, Aslı
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 09-01-2023
• Subjects: Hydrothermal Treatment; Subcritical Hydrolysis; Sugar industry; Wastewater
• ISSN: 2365-6549; 2365-6549
• DOI: 10.1002/slct.202203300

The sugar industry is one of the most wastewater‐producing industries and it contains high content of organic and inorganic substances. Treating and reusing wastewater has significant importance because sugar industry needs to use a high volume of water. In this study, sugar industry wastewater was treated under subcritical conditions and the impacts of reaction temperature and duration over TOC removal percentage were investigated. Additionally, the impact of NaOH concentration over TOC removal percentage was examined. The highest TOC removal was obtained almost 95 % in the presence of 0.1 M of NaOH at 240 °C for 90 min of reaction duration. Treatment of sugar industry wastewater by subcritical water oxidation followed the second‐order reaction kinetic model and the activation energy was found as 11.41 kJ/mol. Furthermore, the intermediate products were identified via GC‐MS.
Subcritical water as a reaction media is investigated in this work as a promising solution to treat sugar industry wastewater. The effect of reaction parameters (reaction temperature and duration) for the removal of Total Organic Carbon (TOC) was investigated. It was found that the addition of NaOH enhanced TOC removal from sugar industry wastewater.