Micropollutants Removal from Surface Water Using a Pilot Vacuum-UV Advanced Oxidation Process
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 10
Abstract
Organic micropollutants (OMPs) are becoming more common in drinking water supplies worldwide. Vacuum-UV (VUV) radiation is an incipient chemical-free oxidation process that offers a potentially cost-effective technology for the removal of OMPs. Utilizing a pilot system consisting of two annular VUV reactors, the authors investigated continuous-flow degradation of atrazine, a widely used herbicide, as a model OMP in synthetic and natural surface water. Nearly complete removal (i.e., 97%) of 100 ppb atrazine in an inlet stream was attained for both synthetic and raw surface water samples at a Reynolds number below 4,500. To provide a better understanding of the feasibility of this VUV process for the effective elimination of OMPs, a complete descriptive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed and validated using the data obtained from the pilot study. The proposed model closely predicted the impact of varying flow rates and water matrix (natural organic matter and alkalinity) on atrazine degradation, with less than 2.8% average absolute relative deviation (AARD%). A sensitivity analysis of the operational variables indicated the critical role of flow rate and background water composition on degradation performance and energy efficiency of the VUV treatment systems. To assess cost-effectiveness of the pilot VUV system for remediation of atrazine-contaminated waters, an electrical energy-per-order (EEO) analysis was conducted, showing that a sequential installation of the two annular VUV reactors was up to 25% more energy efficient than a parallel configuration.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to RES’EAU-WaterNET and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for their financial support. The authors acknowledge the Spectral Innovations Ltd. and BI Pure Water Inc. for providing the VUV/UV pilot system. Also, thanks to Rob North for his valuable contribution to the experimental work.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 10 • October 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 9, 2017
Accepted: Apr 21, 2017
Published online: Jul 19, 2017
Published in print: Oct 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Dec 19, 2017
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