Treatment of laundry wastewater by solar photo-Fenton process at pilot plant scale

Laundry sector consumes a huge amount of water which is usually discharged as wastewater instead of being reused. The application of biological treatment of laundry wastewater coupled with post-treatment utilizing advanced oxidation processes creates a possibility to recycle water to the washing process. However, the investigations on such systems are very limited. In the present work, a novel approach of post-treatment of laundry wastewater utilizing solar photo-Fenton operated at a pilot scale in a compound parabolic collector (CPC) photoreactor is proposed. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was used as a representative of surfactants applied in the laundry system. The effect of feed matrix was investigated using distilled water as a reference matrix and synthetic wastewater simulating the composition of biologically pre-treated laundry wastewater. Different concentrations of H2O2(50-400 mg/L) and ferrous iron (2.75-10 mg/L) were assayed. For comparison purpose, experiments at neutral pH using ethylenediamine-N,N '-disuccinic acid (EDDS) as an iron complexing agent were carried out. A high SDS removal efficiency was obtained under both neutral and acidic pH, reaching 89% and 96%, respectively, in just 8 min. However, the remaining organic load originating from EDDS needs application of further post-treatment steps. Therefore, the solar photo-Fenton operated under acidic pH was found to be a more promising approach of post-treatment of laundry wastewater aimed at its reuse.

Automated summary

The laundry sector generates a significant amount of wastewater, which can be treated and reused efficiently through solar photo-Fenton technology, although additional post-treatment steps might be required to handle residual organic content.