• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.8
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• pp.534-541
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• 2014

This study investigated a method to determine an efficient operating condition for the $UV/H_2O_2$ process. The OH radical scavenging factor is the most important factor to predict the removal efficiency of the target compound and determine the operating condition of the $UV/H_2O_2$ process. To rapidly and simply measure the scavenging factor, Rhodamine B (RhB) was selected as a probe compound. Its reliability was verified by comparing it with a typical probe compound (para-chlorobenzoic acid, pCBA); the difference between RhB and pCBA was only 1.1%. In a prediction test for the removal of Ibuprofen, the RhB method also shows a high reliability with an error rate of about 5% between the experimental result and the model prediction using the measured scavenging factor. In the monitoring result, the scavenging factor in the influent water of the $UV/H_2O_2$ pilot plant was changed up to 200% for about 8 months, suggesting that the required UV dose could be increased about 1.7 times to achieve 90% caffeine removal. These results show the importance of the scavenging factor measurement in the $UV/H_2O_2$ process, and the operating condition could simply be determined from the scavenging factor, absorbance, and information pertaining to the target compound.