Effects of shock waves, ultraviolet light, and electric fields from pulsed discharges in water on inactivation of Escherichia coli.

In this work, the bacterial inactivation effects of shock waves, ultraviolet (UV) light, and electric field produced by high-voltage pulsed discharge in liquid with needle-plate configurations were studied. The contributions of each effect on the bacterial killing ratio in the discharge process were obtained individually by modifying reactor type and usage of glass, quartz, and black balloons. The results showed that the location from the discharge center axis significantly influenced the effects of shock waves and electric fields, although the effect of UV light was not affected by the location in the reactor. The effects of shock waves and electric fields were improved by decreasing the distance from the discharge center axis. Under this experimental condition, the effects of shock waves, UV light, and electric fields produced by discharges on bacterial inactivation were approximately 36.1%, 30.8%, 12.7%, respectively. Other contributions seemed to be due to activated species.

Resourceful treatment of alcohol distillery wastewater by pulsed discharge.

Resourceful treatment of alcohol distillery wastewater by pulsed discharge in liquid (PDL) was first studied in this work. The biodegradability of alcohol wastewater can be effectively improved and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal attained over 40% within 15min PDL treatment. Hydrogen produced from the treating processes was emphatically analyzed. The flow rate, and yield of hydrogen achieved were 80mL/min, 146mL/g COD removed within 30min respectively, which were much better than existing technologies. Meanwhile, the mechanism of hydrogen production from alcohol distillery wastewater by PDL was presented in this work indicating that different region in reactor has different mechanism. In discharge channel, high-energy electrons and resultant free radicals played a leading role. Far away from discharge channel, the neutral particles with strong oxidizing were more important. This work can be a good guidance for both treatment of refractory wastewater and mechanism of hydrogen production by plasma reforming.