Petrochemical wastewater treatment by modified electro-Fenton process with nano iron particles

Petrochemical manufacturing wastewaters often contain a high concentration of biodegradable com-pounds that possess either toxicity or activity inhibition to the biological unit. In this paper, COD removal from petrochemical wastewaters by electro- Fenton process was studied. The effect of operating conditions such as reaction time, current density, pH, H2O2/Fe^2+ molar ratio, and H2O2 of petrochemical wastewater (PW) (mL/L) on the performance of the process has been studied. The experimental results showed that COD was 75.52% removed by the reaction with hydroxyl radicals generated from electrochemically assisted Fenton’s reaction. With our cell design, the higher oxidation rate has been obtained applying a current of 57.01 mA, at pH 2.92 and in the presence of 0.3 mM Fe^2+ as catalyst and at reaction time of 86.33 minutes.