Modelling Industrial Wastewater Ozonation In Bubble Contactors. 1. Rate Coefficient Determination

Abstract
A study of the ozonation of distillery and tomato wastewaters was carried out in a small bubble contactor in order to obtain kinetic data for scaling-up. Thus, several parameters, such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), 254 nm absorbance (A254) and organic carbon content (OC), were followed during ozonation at different experimental conditions. For distillery wastewaters all parameters investigated have the highest decreases during the first minutes of ozonation, A254 showing the highest disappearance rates. Thus, during the first fifteen minutes of ozonation an important decrease of the 254 nm absorbance (˜ 75%) was observed. At further reaction times values of all parameters studied decrease slowly, eventually reaching a plateau value. During approximately the first two hours of reaction, dissolved ozone was never found, which suggested that fast or moderate gas-liquid reactions took place in the wastewaters.