Correlation of Phosphorus Adsorption with Chemical Properties of Aluminum-Based Drinking Water Treatment Residuals Collected from Various Parts of the United States.

Over the past several decades, the value of drinking water treatment residuals (WTRs), a byproduct of the coagulation process during water purification, has been recognized in various environmental applications, including sustainable remediation of phosphorus (P)-enriched soils. Aluminum-based WTRs (Al-WTRs) are suitable adsorbent materials for P, which can be obtained and processed inexpensively. However, given their heterogeneous nature, it is essential to identify an easily analyzable chemical property that can predict the capability of Al-WTRs to bind P before soil amendment. To address this issue, thirteen Al-WTRs were collected from various geographical locations around the United States. The non-hazardous nature of the Al-WTRs was ascertained first. Then, their P adsorption capacities were determined, and the chemical properties likely to influence their adsorption capacities were examined. Statistical models were built to identify a single property to best predict the P adsorption capacity of the Al-WTRs. Results show that all investigated Al-WTRs are safe for environmental applications, and oxalate-extractable aluminum is a significant indicator of the P adsorption capacity of Al-WTRs (p-value = 0.0002, R2 = 0.7). This study is the first to report a simple chemical test that can be easily applied to predict the efficacy of Al-WTRs in binding P before their broadscale land application.

Investigating the effect of hydrogen peroxide as an electron acceptor in increasing the capability of slurry photocatalytic process in dye removal.

The hydrogen peroxide role in photocatalytic degradation of an anionic azo dye, Acid Orange 7 (AO7), was investigated in a slurry reactor. Commercial ZnO nanoparticles with an average size between 10 to 30 nm were used as catalysts. Optimum conditions for different parameters, including dye concentration (10-100 mg/L), catalyst concentration (0.1-0.5 g/L), and pH (5-10), were determined first in the absence of H2O2. Changes in the COD were measured for the optimum condition. The impact of adding hydrogen peroxide at different concentrations to the system operating at optimum conditions was investigated. It was observed that 0.416 mM hydrogen peroxide increased the system's efficiency and decreased reaction time by 40 min. The reaction followed first-order kinetic. Hydrogen peroxide alone did not contribute to oxidizing the contaminant, and its positive impact was attributed to decreasing electron-hole recombination in the photocatalytic process. Not only can the hydrogen peroxide-assisted photocatalytic process decrease retention time in treatment units, but it can also result in more contaminant degradation. Therefore, it can reduce the treatment cost.