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This work evaluated the performance of an electrochemical oxidation process (EOP), using boron-doped diamond on niobium substrate (Nb/BDD), for the treatment of a reverse osmosis concentrate (ROC) produced from a petrochemical wastewater. The effects of applied current density (5, 10, or 20 mA·cm-2) and oxidation time (0 to 5 h) were evaluated following changes in chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC). Current efficiency and specific energy consumption were also evaluated. Besides, the organic byproducts generated by EOP were analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC⁻MS). The results show that current densities and oxidation time lead to a COD and TOC reduction. For the 20 mA·cm-2, changes in the kinetic regime were found at 3 h and associated to the oxidation of inorganic ions by chlorinated species. After 3 h, the oxidants act in the organic oxidation, leading to a TOC removal of 71%. Although, due to the evolution of parallel reactions (O2, H2O2, and O3), the specific energy consumption also increased, the resulting consumption value of 66.5 kW·h·kg-1 of COD is considered a low energy requirement representing lower treatment costs. These results encourage the applicability of EOP equipped with Nb/BDD as a treatment process for the ROC.

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Antibiotics are not efficiently removed in conventional wastewater treatments. In fact, different advanced oxidation process (AOPs), including ozone, peroxide, UV radiation, among others, are being investigated in the elimination of microcontaminants. Most of AOPs proved to be efficient on the degradation of antibiotics, but the mineralization is on the one hand not evaluated or on the other hand not high. At this work, the UV-based hybrid process, namely Photo-assisted electrochemical oxidation (PEO), was applied, aiming the mineralization of microcontaminants such as the antibiotics Amoxicillin (AMX), Norfloxacin (NOR) and Azithromycin (AZI). The influence of the individual contributions of electrochemical oxidation (EO) and the UV-base processes on the hybrid process (PEO) was analysed. Results showed that AMX and NOR presented higher mineralization rate under direct photolysis than AZI due to the high absorption of UV radiation. For the EO processes, a low mineralization was found for all antibiotics, what was associated to a mass-transport limitation related to the low concentration of contaminants (200 µg/L). Besides that, an increase in mineralization was found, when heterogeneous photocatalysis and EO are compared, due to the influence of UV radiation, which overcomes the mass-transport limitations. Although the UV-based processes control the reaction pathway that leads to mineralization, the best results to mineralize the antibiotics were achieved by PEO hybrid process. This can be explained by the synergistic effect of the processes that constitute them. A higher mineralization was achieved, which is an important and useful finding to avoid the discharge of microcontaminants in the environment.

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Concentration polarization is intrinsically associated with the selective character of membranes and often means flux decline and which causes a subsequent decrease of ultrafiltration and nanofiltration performance. More important is the fact that it acts as a precursor of membrane fouling and creates severe fouling problems in the longer times range. The quantification of its dependence on the operating parameters of cross-flow velocities and transmembrane pressures makes recourse to the film theory to introduce mass-transfer coefficients that generally are calculated by dimensionless correlations of the Sherwood number as a function of the Reynolds and Schmidt numbers. In the present work, the mass-transfer coefficients are obtained through the fitting of experimental results by the pressure variation method. The ultrafiltration/nanofiltration of the winery wastewaters from the racking operation is carried out with the membranes ETNA 01PP (Alfa Laval) and NF 270 (Dow Filmtec) under a wide range of cross-flow velocities and transmembrane pressures up to 15 bar.