United Arab Emirates

CSEM-UAE Innovation Center LLC Al Jazeera Al Hamra Area T +971 (7) 244 6929
www.csem-uae.com PO Box 31208 F +971 (7) 244 6951
Ras Al Khaimah, UAE info@csem-uae.com


Waste water Treatment using Solar UV Radiation

Scope
Solar Catalytic Oxidation (SCO), involves generation of highly reactive
radicals especially hydroxyl radicals that degrade a wide range of organic
contaminants present in wastewater in presence of a semiconductor catalyst
and UV radiation. The main objective of this project is to develop a low-cost
and robust static solar photoreactor that uses the UV light from the sun for
hydroxyl radicals generation needed for cleaning industrial wastewaters. In
the developing countries like UAE, the sources of water are less; therefore the
wastewater from the industries can be treated and reused either for irrigation
purpose or for drinking purpose.

Introduction
Heterogeneous photocatalytic oxidation, one of the Advanced Oxidation
Processes (AOPs), has proved to be a promising technology for remediation
of organic pollutants at ambient conditions. As for classical heterogeneous
catalysis, the photocatalytic reactions occur when charge separation are
induced in a large band gap semiconductor by excitation with ultra violet
radiations.

Organic molecule + O
2
CO
2
+ H
2
O + Mineral acids

The main advantage of photo catalytic oxidation is the complete destruction of
organic pollutants. Figure 1 highlights some of the important features of the
major destructive methods that are currently used by the big water companies
to purify water, and compares them with those of semiconductor
photocatalysis. It is clear that the latter process has an advantage of complete
destruction compared with the other more established water purification
processes, but is not rapid in action, nor easy to use/maintain, nor cheap to
buy.

Figure 1 Features of different water purification methods
UV Light
Catalyst (TiO
2
)

United Arab Emirates

CSEM-UAE Innovation Center LLC Al Jazeera Al Hamra Area T +971 (7) 244 6929
www.csem-uae.com PO Box 31208 F +971 (7) 244 6951
Ras Al Khaimah, UAE info@csem-uae.com

However, the use of natural solar UV energy instead of artificial UV lamp
reduces the cost of PCO compared with some alternate technologies. The
available solar UV-irradiation for a specific location is the main factor in
determining the cost of a solar-based system. It was reported from the
literature that the lamp-based systems are cheaper than solar powered
systems when fewer photons are needed. Solar-based systems with collector
apertures of over 100 m
2
are clearly cheaper than lamp-based systems when
the average yearly global UV irradiation is over 15 W/m
2
.

Solar Photoreactor
The specific hardware needed for solar photocatalytic applications is very
similar to that used for conventional thermal applications with the following
main differences: the fluid must be exposed to the ultraviolet solar radiation,
so the absorber must be transparent to this radiation and no thermal
insulation is required as the temperature does not play a significant role in the
photocatalytic process. For solar photocatalytic applications, non-concentrator
based collectors are more efficient than concentrator-based systems due to
the use of both direct and diffuse UV light. A simple flat plate solar photo
reactor setup is developed at CSEM-uae using local infrastructure. The setup
consists of a tank for mixing the polluted water with the catalyst and a
photoreactor with UV radiation filtering glass. The schematic of the
experimental setup is shown in Figure 2.

Figure.2 Wastewater treatment using solar photo reactor

Experiments and Results

UV Radiation measurements
Solar UV, which is a highly significant parameter for solar photocatalytic
experiments, was continuously recorded during the experiments. A global UV
Eppley radiometer was used to measure the solar UV data. The global UV
radiation available at UAE is ranging from 20 to 40 W/m
2
.
Experiments were performed to measure the transparency of the UV sheet
(Imported from Germany) and a tempered glass sheet (local made). It was

United Arab Emirates

CSEM-UAE Innovation Center LLC Al Jazeera Al Hamra Area T +971 (7) 244 6929
www.csem-uae.com PO Box 31208 F +971 (7) 244 6951
Ras Al Khaimah, UAE info@csem-uae.com

found that the UV sheet is 85% transparent to the global UV radiation
whereas the tempered glass transmitting 50% of the global UV radiation.

Phenol degradation experiments
In this study, Phenol was employed as an environmentally relevant model
pollutant and TiO
2
was employed as catalyst for testing the feasibility and
efficiency of the SCO setup. Several experiments were performed with
different initial concentrations of phenol, catalyst concentrations and with a
continuous air flow.
Phenol conversion increases with increase the concentration of phenol and
light intensity. The conversions increased from 60% to 94% as the initial
phenol concentration increased from 20 to 40ppm. Dissolved oxygen
concentration plays a vital role in the degradation of phenol. It was observed
that the degradation rate is increased from 87% without air flow to 95 % when
air is supplied continuously. This is due to the presence of oxygen to suppress
the electron hole recombination and consequently higher oxygen
concentration leads to higher conversions. High degradation percentages
were observed with direct UV, but this limits the recycling of catalyst particles
due to contamination with sand particles from the atmosphere.

Conclusion
The SCO process is definitely an incremental process compared to the
available technologies for water purification because the technology uses
solar light for the destruction of hazardous organic pollutants in wastewater.
Experiments at CSEM-uae concludes that degradation percentage of around
90-95% has been achieved utilizing the solar ultra violet radiation available at
UAE. The development of a low cost solar photo reactor field in combination
with a highly reliable biological treatment process can be a good option for the
complete destruction of wastewaters polluted with industrial wastes.