Treatment of wastewater from paracetamol factory by using non-thermal plasma and active carbon

Non-thermal plasma combined with activated carbon was developed to purify wastewater from paracetamol factory. The effect of discharge time, discharge voltage, initial pH value of wastewater, velocity of the air flow and whether adding activated carbon on the COD degradation and decolorization ratio were investigated. It was found that as discharge time prolonged, decolorization ratio decreased but the COD degradation ratio increased at first and then reached to a constant value. The degradation ratio of COD increased and the decolorization decreased with the increasing of input voltage. The ratios of COD degradation and decolorization decreased when the initial pH value increased. With the increasing of inputting air flow the COD degradation ratio went up and had a optimal peak value and then the decolorization ratio declined. When activated carbon was added the ratio of decolorization and the COD degradation can be improved significantly. In this paper when the input voltage is 25 kV, the distance between two electrodes is 6 mm, air flow is 16 L/h, initial pH value is 3.73, the 4 times diluted wastewater was discharged 120 min and then added 1 g activated carbon, the ratio of COD degradation reached to 82.76%.