Process optimization for the treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater catalyzed by poly sulpha sponge

In the present investigation, an attempt was made to treat the pharmaceutical wastewater (PWW) by Iron impregnated poly acrylamide (IPA) compound in a fluidized bed reactor as heterogeneous catalyst. The IPA was characterized by XRD, SEM, EDX, TGA, DSC, fluorescence spectroscopy and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). The experiments were carried out under batch and continuous mode operations. The quantitative removal of COD, BOD5, NH4+-N and TKN from the PWW was evaluated. The oxidation of organics in PWW was confirmed through UV-visible, fluorescence and FT-IR spectroscopy. In this study, the mechanism of oxidation of the persistent organic pollutants in pharmaceutical wastewater in terms of the generation of (OH)-O-center dot radical using IPA was evaluated. The (OH)-O-center dot radical was identified by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and with 5,5-dimethyl-1-pyrroline-N-oxide (DMPO) spin trapping method. (C) 2014 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.