Degradation of organic matter in olive-oil mill wastewater through homogeneous Fenton-like reaction

The degradation of organic matter present in olive-oil mill wastewater from two-phase olive-oil extraction process was carried out by chemical oxidation reaction. It was shown that organic matter is efficiently degraded through a Fenton-like reaction using FeCl3 as catalyst in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Oxidation was carried out in a batch reactor with controlled temperature. Operating at pH 3.0. H2O2 concentration = 100 g dm(-3), [FeCl3]/[H2O2] ratio = 0.04, and ambient temperature (281-285 K). 92.6% of chemical oxygen demand and 99.8% of total phenols were removed. Kinetics can be described by a two step first order model. The kinetic parameters at ambient temperature and pH 3 were calculated. In the temperature range 278-313 K, the best performance was obtained at 303 K. The experiments performed at different temperatures allowed to calculate the apparent activation energy E-a = 8.7 kJ mol(-1). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.