Treatment of cleaning waters from seawater desalination reverse osmosis membranes for reutilization purposes. Part I: Application of Fenton process

The scope of the present work is the study of the Fenton process applied to the removal of the organic load of cleaning waters from seawater desalination reverse osmosis membranes in order to be reused for irrigation or in other stages of the process and contribute to the concept of zero discharge in a reverse osmosis desalination plant. Fenton experiments were performed at pH 3 after selecting ratios of H2O2/COD (wt.) between 1.9 and 20, and H2O2/Fe2+ (wt.) between 0.13 and 82.80. For the studied conditions, it was observed that the optimal reaction time was 157 min and the optimal reagents doses were above 4000 mg L−1 of H2O2 and 200 mg L−1 of Fe2+. This combination achieved a maximum TOC removal of 67% and a final BOD5 value of 14.8 mg L−1 O2.