Design of New Wet Heterogeneous Photo Oxidation Process for Refinery Waste Water Treatment in Photo Baffled Reactor

Phenol is considered as a hazardous agent in refinery waste water due to its toxicity to humans and animals. Therefore, numerous treatment processes are developed for removing this compound from industrial waste water which is an essential and important industrial need. In Baiji refinery-Iraq, the simulated produced wastewater with phenol concentration of 632 ppm represents a good example for examining a new application for removing this toxic agent. In this work, two different types of new heterogeneous catalyst were investigated and compared via catalytic wet photo oxidation process; namely, 5% ZnO/Al₂O₃ and 3% ZnO/Al₂O₃ as well as investigating temperature, reaction time, and mixing speed changes in photo baffled reactor. Results demonstrated that phenol removal efficiency proportional directly to reaction temperature, reaction duration, and mixing speed. A percentage of 95.45% Phenol removal was obtained using a temperature of 70 °C, reaction time of 100s, and a mixing speed of 750 rpm when using 5% ZnO/Al₂O₃. And when using 3% ZnO/Al₂O₃ the optimum removal was 86.22% with the same operating parameters. The new used technique proved to be a promising method for Phenol removal for industrial use in various applications.