Electron Beam as an Effective Wastewater Treatment Technology in Lab-Scale Application

Wastewater containing a high concentration of organic and emerging pollutants has been and remains a common and urgent issue, though many conventional methods are losing their effectiveness due to wastewater's chemical complexity. Electron beam (EB) is a common type of irradiation used in wastewater treatment, as it has the ability to create free radicals to break down chemical bonds, which is beneficial for treating modern wastewater complex matrix. As a result, many systems have been developed that make EB cheaper and easier to scale up. This paper reviews the application of EB in wastewater treatment along with many factors (especially scavengers) attributing to the effectiveness of this treatment. It has been proven that EB is used in a variety of ways and is ultimately effective in wastewater treatments. However, in order to achieve high efficiency, EB has been utilized in a relatively high dose, which results from the competition between scavengers and target compounds and the complex structure of many organic compounds. Also, the subordinate radical forming also plays an important role in the pollutants degradation by using EB when there is still a limitation in this field. It is important to perform more research on scavengers and secondary radicals in order to overcome the limitation of EB and make it become state-of-the-art technology. (c) 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Automated summary

This paper reviews the application of electron beam (EB) in wastewater treatment, highlighting its effectiveness in breaking down chemical bonds in complex wastewater to treat organic and emerging pollutants. More research is needed to overcome the limitations of EB in terms of scavengers and secondary radicals for achieving high efficiency in wastewater treatment.