An efficient treatment technique for TMAH wastewater by catalytic oxidation

We have developed a TMAH wastewater treatment technique that consists of a combination of two novel decomposition processes: pyrolyzing TMAH to TMA and decomposing TMA to N₂, CO₂ and H₂O by means of a selective catalytic oxidation for nitrogenous compounds. We have tested a system using this technique in long-term treatment of the actual wastewater and have found it to be sufficiently practical. The running cost of the treatment system using our technique would be about 1/9 the cost of disposing the wastewater as industrial waste, and about 2.3 times that of biological treatment. Compared with biological treatment, our system is tolerant to many treatment conditions, and operation management is much easier. Furthermore, our system occupies only about 1/6 the area of a biological treatment system