The challenges of treating high strength wastewaters: CWAO using MWNT supported ruthenium catalysts
Conference Paper
Overview
Overview
abstract
High strength wastewaters containing aromatic compounds are normally not efficiently treated by conventional methods, including the common biological treatment. In these cases a more sophisticated approach is necessary to attain the desired levels of purification. Catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) using carbon based catalysts is employed worldwide as effective pre-treatment of effluents with these characteristics. Carbon materials are preferred as active catalysts or support for preparing them due to their morphological and structural characteristics. In the last 10 years, due to a tremendous development in materials production and processing, carbon nano-structures are becoming more accessible and common widening their range of applications [1]. In this context, the scope of the present work is to illustrate a potential use of multi-walled carbon nano-tubes (MWNT) supported ruthenium catalysts for catalytic wet air oxidation of aniline polluted wastewaters. The metal was supported by incipient wetness and excess impregnation, starting from liquid solutions of three different Ru precursors. Impregnation was carried out on modified MWNT, namely on MWNT-COOH (HNO{sub 3} modified) and MWNT-COONa (HNO{sub 3}/Na{sub 2}CO{sub 3} modified). For the 1% weight Ru/MWNT catalysts, the order of activities decreased in the sequence Ru(COD)(COT){>=}RuCl{sub 3}{>=}Ru(C{sub 5}H{sub 5}){sub 2}. The conversion of aniline after 45 min of reaction was 100% for the catalyst prepared with Ru(COD)(COT). The influence of the Ru precursor, preparation method and the support surface modification was studied comparing the conversion of aniline obtained for the different prepared Ru/MWNT catalysts (Figure 1). MWNT as support material, provide a significant metal dispersion with very small Ru nanoparticles (Figure 2) being observed. This will induce an efficient surface contact between the aniline molecule and the active sites [2]. The excellent catalytic performances of Ru/MWNT are explained in terms of the high dispersion of Ru and high external surface of the catalysts, promoting an efficient contact between the substrate and the catalyst. The results obtained with model solutions of aniline, as well as real case effluents, led to treated water of excellent quality, which can be returned to the environment without any further treatment. In this way CWAO can be used as sole treatment process, avoiding the necessity of extra costly post-treatments.
