Disinfecting behaviour of peracetic acid for municipal wastewater reuse Original Research Article

Following an increased interest in the last decade to employing peracetic acid (PAA) as an alternative disinfectant to chlorination, a study was started to investigate the technical, economic and chemical suitability of PAA for disinfecting municipal wastewater to be reused in agriculture. Laboratory and pilot-scale (10 m3/h) experiments of disinfecting secondary settled effluent from the municipal wastewater treatment plant of Taranto (S. Italy) were made where, under the experimental conditions investigated, the disinfection process was addressed by modelling PAA consumption and microbial inactivation by zero-order kinetics.