Treatment efficiency of a combination of alternative technologies in removing pollutants from pesticide containing wastewater

Abstract

Pesticide containing wastewater is concerned due to their toxicity to human health and the environment, and therefore, is attracted much attention by public communities and scientists. This type of wastewater can be treated by conventional treatment methods including physical, chemical, biological methods and so on. Unfortunately, the efficiency of these methods are mostly undesired as expectation because they cannot completely remove toxic organic pollutants from wastewater. In this study, an experiment on laboratory scale model of cold plasma technology, a well-known water treatment method in recent decades, was performed to assess its efficiency on removing pesticide fenobucarb from the wastewater. Furthermore, another experiment on laboratory scale model of the cold plasma combined with coagulation/flocculation and ion exchange process was implemented to assess the efficiency of these combination and each process as well on treatment of pesticide containing wastewater. Experimental results demonstrated that the model of technologies combined was high effective in removing organic pollutants from wastewater. However, the specific efficiency of cold plasma technology in treating wastewater was low. Treatment time, energy supply and wastewater characteristics are the factors which are necessary to be further studied for cold plasma technology application.