Status and Prospects of Concentrated Organic Wastewater Degradation

Clean fresh water is essential to our life. Unfortunately, in our consumer-based economy, a large amounts of wastewater having been generated by industrial plants. Wastewaters produced in many industrial plants often contain organic compounds which are toxic and not amenable to direct biological treatment. These wastewaters must be treated in order to meet the specifications for discharge or for recycling in the process. Processes that enable the recycling of industrial wastewaters are becoming increasingly important as the amount and quality of freshwater available in certain regions of the world continues to decrease due to long periods of drought and growing water demands. In addition, increasingly stricter wastewater discharge standards continue to be introduced worldwide in an effort to reduce the environmental impacts of industrial processes. This has led to an increasing amount of research being conducted on processes for removing organic and inorganic pollutants from wastewaters.