Mostafa Leili
1,2, Gholamreza Moussavi
2*, Kazem Naddaf
31 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, IR Iran
2 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, IR Iran
3 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran
Abstract
Abstract: Furfural with a chemical formula of C5H4O2 is a toxic compound which has several health problems for both humans and
environment. It has a few exposure routes for entering the human body such as oral, dermal or nasal. In the present study, the efficacies
of an integrated catalytic ozonation process (COP) and novel cyclic biological reactor (CBR) were explored for the removal of furfural
from aqueous solutions. Activated carbon was purchased from Merck Company. It had a Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller (BET) specific
surface area of 1100 m2/g, with an average micropore volume and size of 0.385 cm3/g and 595 µm, respectively. The results indicated that
30% pretreatment with COP could increase furfural and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency with CBR 5.56% and 27.01%,
respectively. With 70% pretreatment by COP, 98.57% furfural and 95.34% COD removal efficiencies happen in CBR. Generally, batch and
continuous experiments showed that the integrated COP/CBR could be efficient in eliminating furfural from wastewater and thus may be
a promising technique for treating furfural-containing wastewater