Kinetics of Wet Air Oxidation of Wastewater from Natural Fiber Web Desizing

This work described the application of wet air oxidation (WAO) to the treatment of desizing wastewater from natural fiber processing. A two-liter autoclave batch reactor was used for the experiments. The range of operating temperature examined was between 150 and 290℃, and partial pressure of oxygen ranged from 0.375 to 2.25 MPa standardized at 25℃. Variations in Chemical Oxygen Demand(COD) and Total Organic Carbon(TOC) were monitored during each experiment and used to assess the performance of the process. Experimental results showed that WAO can be an efficient method for the treatment of desizing wnstewater. Furthermore, Catalytic Wet Air Oxidation (CWAO) was applied to reduce the reaction temperature and pressure in WAO process. A higher COD removal ratio was achieved under more mild reaction condition with the aid of CWAO. A mathematical model was also proposed to simulate the WAO process of desizing wastewater, in which three distinct kinetics steps were considered to describe the degradation of starch. The model simulations were in well agreement with the experimental data.