Treatability studies of hospital wastewaters with AOPs by Taguchi’s experimental design

Abstract

In this study, it was studied various advanced oxidation treatment processes; Fenton, UV/H2O2, UV/O-3/H2O2 for treatability of hospital wastewaters containing antibiotics (cephalosporines). Taguchi's L25 orthogonal array design was applied to design of advanced oxidation processes, for simplification of the analysis and calculations. 95,7%, 90,65%, 91,8% COD and 55,86%, 60,83%, 70,8% TOC removal efficiencies were obtained under the best operation conditions for UV/H2O2, UV/O-3/H2O2 and Fenton processes, respectively. According to the ANOVA results, pH was of great importance in COD removal for Fenton. For the UV/H2O2 processes, H2O2 has significance in COD and TOC removals. As for the O-3/UV/H2O2 processes, O-3/UV reaction time was found as an important parameter effecting the removal rates. Also, cephalosporine antibiotic active compounds (cefradine and cefaclor) were degraded completely within minutes for all of the processes. Taguchi's Method was found useful for the environmental applications and simplifications of advanced oxidation processes for treatment of hospital wastewaters and calculations.