Low-Cost Photoreactor to Monitor Wastewater Pollutant Decomposition

Actually, the quality of water is one of the most important indicators of the human environmental impact, the control of which is crucial to avoiding irreversible damage in the future. Nowadays, in parallel to the growth of the chemical industry, new chemical compounds have been developed, such as dyes and medicines. The increasing use of these products has led to the appearance of recalcitrant pollutants in industrial wastewater, and even in the drinking water circuit of our populations. The current work presents a photoreactor prototype that allows the performance of experiments for the decomposition of coloured pollutants using photocatalysis at the laboratory scale. The design of this device included the study of the photometric technique for light emission and the development of a software that allows monitoring the dye degradation process. Open-source hardware platforms, such as Arduino, were used for the monitoring system, which have the advantages of being low-cost platforms. A software application that manages the communication of the reactor with the computer and graphically displays the data read by the sensor was also developed. The results obtained demonstrated that this device can accelerate the photodegradation reaction in addition to monitoring the changes throughout the process.

Automated summary

Water quality is a crucial indicator of human environmental impact, and its control is vital to prevent irreversible damage. The growth of the chemical industry has led to the development of new compounds, such as dyes and medicines, resulting in recalcitrant pollutants in wastewater and drinking water. This study presents a laboratory-scale photoreactor prototype that can decompose colored pollutants using photocatalysis, along with a software application for monitoring and managing the degradation process. The device utilizes Arduino as a low-cost monitoring system and has shown the ability to accelerate the photodegradation reaction.