Wastewater treatment processes utilizing hydrodynamic cavitation

In the present work, the potentiality of the hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) for the degradation of organic pollutants from industrial effluents has been studied. Cavitation is a phenomenon of formation, growth, collapse of microbubbles or cavities, in a few milli- to microseconds and releases large magnitude of energy in a short span of time. The main chemical effects of HC are the generation of highly reactive free radicals in the aqueous environment; it is possible to exploit these radicals for the intensification of chemical processes such as degradation of the water pollutants. HC represents an innovative advanced oxidation processes that can replace or be combined with the traditional oxidation processes. Lab experiments have been performed to remove pollutants as dyes (methyl orange and methylene blue) that can be present in textile effluents. The core of the experimenal apparatus was a Venturi Tube having a diameter of 12 mm and a convergent of 2 mm. In order to investigate the potentiality of HC, the effect of several operative conditions was investigated as contaminant concentration, inlet pressure and time. Other experiments have been conducted adding hydrogen peroxide, iron and titanium oxides in order to monitor the effect of hybrid treatment on pollutant degradation.