Treatment of winery wastewater using a photocatalytic/photolytic reactor

In this study, an annular photocatalytic/photolytic reactor system was designed to investigate remediation of winery wastewater. The performance of the reactor was studied as a functional of various operating variables, such as gas flow rate, pH and catalyst loading. It was found that the optimum gas flow rate was 6 L/min whereas the optimum pH value is 6.5. The highest photodegradation rate and the maximum COD removal were achieved at zero catalyst loading with COD removal of about 84%. Lower rates of chemical reaction in photocatalysis compared to photolysis were possibly because of the shielding of UV light by titania particles. This hypothesis was confirmed by conducting further experiments with inert glass beads where the reaction rate decreased with particle loading in an identical manner.