WEIGHTED FLUENCE-BASED PARAMETERS for Assessing UV and UV/H2O2 Performance and Transferring Bench-Scale Results to Full-Scale Water Treatment Reactor Models

The lack a of standard approach for presenting contaminant remediation kinetics using the UV/H2O2 advanced oxidation process (AOP) for water treatment hampers efforts to cross-interpret results and apply literature data for the prediction of treatment efficiencies in new experimental settings. Properly weighted UV fluence rates can be used to define parameters for assessing the UV/H2O2 AOP that models predict to be essentially invariant with reactor geometry and lamp type. A pollutant action spectrum-weighted average fluence-based rate constant characterizes the direct photolysis portion of the reaction, while an H2O2 action spectrum-weighted average fluence rate-normalized ⋅OH concentration characterizes the indirect photolysis portion of the reaction. Experimental data for the photolysis of atrazine gathered at two different laboratories support the validity of the model. Using these parameters, a relatively simple kinetic model is presented that allows prediction of pollutant degradation rates in any reactor for which the pollutant and H2O2 weighted fluence rates can be calculated.