Membrane process enhancement of 2-phase and 3-phase olive mill wastewater treatment plants by photocatalysis with magnetic-core titanium dioxide nanoparticles

In this work, the benefit of using photocatalysis as a pretreatment step for a subsequent olive mill wastewater (OMW) treatment process by membranes will be discussed.Membrane processes appear to be suitable to purify aqueous wastewater streams polluted by organic matter such as OMW, but suffer severe fouling. In order to avoid fouling, the use of operating conditions below the boundary flux is suggested. The problem is that in many cases, boundary flux values are extremely low, making the process economically not feasible. In order to overcome this limitation, pretreatment steps are necessary to increase boundary flux values accordingly. Photocatalysis appears to be capable to achieve these requirements: on one hand, the process is capable to reduce the organic load of the feedstock and on the other hand, particle size distributions of the suspended organic matter are changed. Both principles are known in literature to lead to boundary flux value changes.In this paper the authors report the obtained results of the experimental work concerning photocatalysis and membrane performances.