%P 3236-3242 %V 10 %I Asian Network for Scientific Information %A E.S. Elmolla %A M. Chaudhuri %T Effect of photo-fenton operating conditions on the performance of photo-fenton-SBR process for recalcitrant wastewater treatment %J Journal of Applied Sciences %L scholars1375 %O cited By 15 %N 24 %R 10.3923/jas.2010.3236.3242 %D 2010 %K Antibiotics; Efficiency; Effluents; Image processing, Amoxicillin; Antibiotic wastewaters; Cloxacillin; Discharge standards; Hydraulic retention time; Operating condition; Overall efficiency; Photo-Fenton, Wastewater treatment %X The study was undertaken to examine the effect of H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio as one of the important operating conditions on the performance of combined photo-Fenton-SBR process for treatment of recalcitrant (antibiotic) wastewater. The SBR was fed with photo-Fenton-treated antibiotic wastewater under five H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio (10, 20, 50, 100 and 150). The results indicated that, as H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio decreases (increase of Fe2+ concentration), BOD5/COD ratio of the photo-Fenton-treated effluent increases and SBR and overall efficiency increases. The SBR efficiency in terms of sCOD removal was observed to be very sensitive to BOD5/COD ratio below 0.40. It decreased from 69±1 at BOD/COD ratio of 0.49±0.01 to 44±1 at 0.19±0.02. In this study, the best H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio for treatment of the antibiotic wastewater was observed to equal 20. At photo-Fenton-SBR operating conditions (H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio 20, H2O2/COD molar ratio 2.5, pH 3 and 30 min photo-Fenton irradiation time and 24 h hydraulic retention time in SBR), the combined photo-Fenton-SBR efficiency (overall) was 86 as sCOD and final sCOD was 56±2 mg L-1, which meets the requirements of the discharge standard. © 2010 Asian Network for Scientific Information.