Performance Evaluation of a Novel Solar Industrial Wastewater Treatment Unit for Reuse

摘要

In the present study, a novel solar industrial wastewater treatment unit (NIWWTP) was designed, constructed, and tested under actual meteorological conditions of Greater Cairo, Egypt. Nonconventional treatment and decontamination of highly polluted wastewater such as solar degradation is the new approach and currently the focus of intense investigations due to their potential for revolutionary technological applications in the twenty-first century. Industrial wastewater is considered as chemically polluted water that causes most of water-borne diseases. The pollution potential of textile dyes has been primarily prompted due to concerns regarding their possible toxicity and carcinogenicity. Color is the first contaminant to be recognized in wastewater and has to be removed before being discharged into water bodies or on land. This is mainly due to the fact that many dyes are made from known carcinogens and other aromatic compounds. Photocatalytic degradation of dyestuffs from aqueous synthetic sample as well as from real textile wastewater representing industrial color-containing wastewater from a textile company will be used in this study to investigate the performance efficiency of the system under investigation for color removal and decontamination of pollutants. Results showed that the treated water was colorless, with minimum chemical contaminates and pathogenically decontaminated. Experimentally, the system was affected by meteorological conditions such as ambient temperature, wind speed, solar radiation intensity, pollutant concentration in wastewater, quantity of water exposed, and water contact time in the system. The use of solar energy for the water treatment process will provide good potential of using renewable energy on a large scale for a nonconventional wastewater treatment plant using clean energy in the coming decades.