Date of Award

2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Department

Environmental Applied Science and Management

First Advisor

Mehrab Mehrvar

Second Advisor

Kimberley Gilbride

Abstract

The reduction and degradation of total organic carbon (TOC) and bacteria inactivation efficiency using Vacuum-Ultraviolet (VUV) oxidation process Ultraviolet-C (UV-C) photolytic process, and their combination (UV-C/VUV and VUV/UV-C) from synthetic slaughterhouse wastewater was investigated. TOC removal rates achieved during continuous mode operation were 6.2%, 5.5%, 5.8%, and 6.1%, respectively. In a second stage, H₂O₂ was added to both processes, UV-C/H₂O₂ and VUV/H₂O₂, and it was found that TOC removal rates were increased twice as much during continious flow operation to 10.8% and 12.2%, respectively. The optimum molar ration of H₂O₂/TOC was found to be 2.5 and 1.5 for each process respectively. Finally, it was observed that all photochemical processes achieved over 99.999% (five logs) of bacteria inactivation in a short period of irradiation time, 27.6 sec.