Efficient mineralization of sugar industry wastewater by catalytic wet air oxidation as an eco-friendly method and its kinetic modelling

In this study, catalytic wet air oxidation using lanthanum cobalt oxide (LaCoO₃) as catalyst was employed for the efficient treatment of synthetic sugar industry wastewater in a single process. A parametric study was performed to determine the optimum conditions. The results showed that reaction temperature and theoretical air percentage were the most effective parameters. Sugar derivatives were almost completely destroyed at the optimum conditions and total organic carbon (TOC) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removals were determined as 91% and 87%, respectively, indicating a high mineralization degree, which was the main goal of advanced oxidation. The reaction kinetics were investigated by pseudo-homogeneous and heterogeneous models based on two different parameters: sucrose and TOC concentration. The degree of fit showed that the reaction order was determined as two for the pseudo-homogeneous approach. According to the surface concentration calculations for heterogeneous models, the presence of mass transfer limitations was only observed for oxygen as gas reactant. All heterogeneous models also fitted the reaction rate data accurately, but the Mars–van Krevelen was the selected model for sucrose and TOC oxidation with the best fit.