Reaction Mechanism and Kinetics of Degradation for Refractory Organic Pollutants in Water by Ultrasonic Irradiation

This experiment was performed to investigate the characteristics of sonolytic reaction as the basic data for development of the ultrasonic AOP(Advanced Oxidation Process) process from which the refractory organic compounds in aqueous solution which are not readily removed by the existing conventional wastewater treatment processes can be destructed and removed. Trichloroethylene (TCE), benzene, and 2,4-dichlorophenol(DCP) were used as the samples, and their destruction efficiency were measured in terms of experimental parameters of the initial solution concentration, initial solution pH, reaction temperature, acoustic frequencies and intensities. Results showed that the destruction efficiencies of all of the sample materials were above 80% within 120 minutes of sonolytic reaction in all reaction condition. The reaction order of these three compounds was verified as Pseudo first order. From the fore-mentioned results, it can be concluded that the refractory organic compounds could be removed by the ultrasonic irradiation with radicals, such as H$.$and OH$.$causing the high increase of pressure and temperature. Finally, it appears that the new AOP technology using ultrasonic irradiation can be applied to the treatment of refractory substances which are difficult to be decomposed by the conventional methods.