Advances in Fenton and Fenton Based Oxidation Processes for Industrial Effluent Contaminants Control-A Review

The global concern about alternative water reuse techniques are increasing continuously as heavy industries such as petrochemicals and agricultures grows bigger each year. Those organic pollutants present in wastewaters which are not treatable by conventional treatment methods, are considered to be treated by stronger and more modern techniques. The presence of these organic compounds in water poses serious threat to public health since most of them are toxic, endocrine disrupting, mutagenic or potentially carcinogenic to humans, animals and aquatic life in general. Wastewaters containing these compounds are known to be high in chemical oxygen demand (COD) and low in biological oxygen demand (BOD). These nonbiodegradable molecules enter the environment predominantly through industrial activities. Traditional wastewater management methods using biological microorganisms (biodegradation) and/or physicochemical processes (flocculation, chlorination, ozonation and misc.), subsequently followed by filtration and adsorption-based separations are able to treat a majority of anthropogenicallypolluted water sources. However, no single method described above is efficient enough to produce water with legallyand practically-acceptable levels of refractory toxic chemicals. Physico-chemical techniques like flocculation, adsorption and reverse osmosis require additional post-treatments to prevent secondary disposal and contamination [1]. Wet air oxidation of effluents with >100 g/L of chemical oxygen demand (COD) generates high concentrations of toxic byproducts like dioxins and furans [2]. Direct oxidation processes are widely used to