Water decontamination by heterogeneous photo-Fenton processes over iron, iron minerals and iron-modified clays

Abstract

The development of new clean technologies that reduce effluent pollution or mitigate the inefficiency of conventional effluent treatment methods constitutes a significant contribution to the fulfillment of sustainable development goals. Large-scale effluent treatment plants rely on a number of physical and/or physicochemical methods, such as filtration, reverse osmosis and activated carbon adsorption, chemical methods, such as chlorination, ozonization and thermal oxidation, and biological methods. However, the removal of barely biodegradable and/or highly toxic pollutants-i.e., harmful even in extremely small doses-by the currently used methods is often highly inefficient and/or costly. Current laboratory-and pilot-scale studies are aimed at developing non-conventional, more effective methods for the efficacious treatment of pesticides, heavy metals, chlorinated hydrocarbons, dyes disinfectants, and antibiotics, among other pharmaceutical and biomedical contaminants.