Cavitation: an auxiliary technique in wastewater treatment schemes

New techniques are being added to wastewater treatment schemes for meeting the high standards of environmental regulations. The present work highlights the use of one such technique, cavitation, for wastewater treatment applications. Two types of cavitation phenomena depending on the type of generation have been discussed and the optimum operating and geometric parameters have been presented for maximum efficiency. Experimental results have been given for sonochemical reactors for the degradation of formic acid to supplement the discussion about operating parameters. Available literature for acoustic and hydrodynamic cavitation have been critically assessed and recommendations have been made for enhanced energy efficient applications of cavitation based technologies. Overall it appears that a lot of work is required in designing the cavitational reactors for large scale operations and a few recommendations for theoretical and experimental studies have been made. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.