Abstract

Hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) is an emerging technology gaining interest in water treatment for use in elimination of a wide range of organic pollutants. The energy released during cavitation phenomenon has number of applications and, particularly, it can be utilized for activation of persulfate (PS) and peroxymonosulfate (PMS). In the present study, hybrid techniques: HC combined with persulfates – HC-PS and HC-PMS were tested for the degradation of BTEX in water. Studies on the effect of initial PS and PMS concentration showed that a molar ratio of the oxidant to BTEX equal to 5 is favorable for both cases. Thus, in 240 min HC-PS-5 process allowed to degrade 91.51%, 95.50%, 94.65%, 94.95% of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and o-xylene, respectively, while 90.85%, 94.50%, 94.36%, 93.07% of those compounds were degraded by HC-PMS-5. BTEX degradation pathway was proposed for HC-PS-5 and HC-PMS-5 processes relying on the identification of the main reaction intermediates using liquid chromatography coupled with UV diode array detector (HPLC-UV-DAD). Benzyl alcohol, phenol, benzoic acid, benzaldehyde and o-cresol were the main intermediates of BTEX degradation, which multistep pathway involved H-abstraction, OH addition and dealkylation in route to mineralization. At final time of treatment primary and secondary pollutants were effectively degraded. In terms of kinetics, BTEX degradation followed the pseudo-first-order reaction model and the degradation kinetics were faster in HC-PMS-5 system than in HC-PS-5. Surprisingly, the presence of chloride ions (Cl−) in HC-PMS-5 improved the degradation efficiency of alkylated benzene derivatives indicating a synergistic effect of Cl− with SO4•− radicals.

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