Effects of ultrasonic and hydrodynamic cavitation on the treatment of cork wastewater by flocculation and Fenton processes

This paper reports that ultrasonic (US) and hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) are efficient strategies for the environmental remediation of cork wastewater (CW). It is necessary to remove toxic, inhibitory or refractory organic matter from CW using physical and chemical techniques (pre-treatment) prior to performing conventional biological treatment. After this biological treatment, it is also critical to further decontaminate (post-treatment) in order to meet the discharge limitation. The pre-treatment of diluted CW using Fenton oxidation (FE) alone led to COD and polyphenol (PP) removal values of 30% and 61%, respectively, while HC and US resulted in 83-90% increases in COD reduction and 26-33% increases in PP reduction. Whereas 55% and 91% COD and PP removal were achieved using flocculation (Floc) alone, COD elimination was increased by a further 7-18% under HC and US. No noticeable improvement in PP elimination was observed. US did not enhance the Floc decontamination of the original concentrated CW, however, considerable quantities of white biofilm were surprisingly generated on the CW surface after the pre-treatment, thus indicating the improvement of biodegradability of the resulting liquid. In fact, the post-treatment stage, using FE alone after having filtered the biofilms, led to reductions of 53% in COD and 90% in PP. The HC and US protocols resulted in 26-34% increases in COD elimination. HC further enhanced PP elimination caused by FE, while US resulted in lower levels of PP elimination.