Ozonation efficiency in removing organic micro pollutants from wastewater with respect to hydraulic loading rates and different wastewaters

- Hydraulic loading to the WWTP has little effect on the efficiency of ozonation.
- Differences in ozonation efficiency for different wastewaters cannot be linked to pH or nitrite.
- A Z-value of 0.8 mg O3/mg TOC is a good starting point but no guarantee for good removal.

Organic micro pollutants can be removed from water by ozonation. In this article we studied the performance of ozonation under real life conditions and compared results of the same ozonation pilot plant installed at different wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) thus operating with different waters.The comparability of the removal and reaction rate constants from one waste water treatment plant were low in respect to reaction rate, removal as well as to response to the specific ozone dose. Neither pH-value nor residual nitrite concentrations were the driving force considering these differences.Further tests with different loadings were conducted at the same WWTP under different weather conditions. For the different hydraulic loading of the biological plant, the ozonation was running with rather similar removal rates concerning the same specific (TOC normalized) ozone dose. The compounds that were removed quantitatively under dry weather were still removed well with three times dry weather flow.Using a dataset from one WWTP to optimize operation in another one is thus questionable.