Winery Wastewater Characterization and Treatment by Fenton’s Process

One of the main sources of water and soil pollution is the release of complex effluents, such as those from the wine industries and research on the degradation of their contaminants is quite a challenging task. The winery wastewaters come from different stages of wine production and their characteristics are highly variable throughout the year. Advanced oxidation technologies such as the Fenton process offer suitable solutions for recalcitrant compounds removal in this kind of wastewaters. Since H2O2 is typically reactive at room temperature and pressure, no energy input is needed for the Fenton process, making it an attractive and a low-cost treatment method. In this study, the Fenton process was applied to treat real winery wastewaters from the bottling stage period. The impacts of Fe2+:H2O2 ratio and H2O2 concentration were studied closely. The results showed that the highest and lowest efficiencies for chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal were 72% and 34%, respectively.