Catalytic wet air oxidation of toxic nitrogen containing compounds (pyridine) from wastewater

Abstract

Cu-Co/C (heterogeneous) and CuSO₄ (homogeneous) were used as catalysts for wet air oxidation to remove nitrogen containing toxic organic compounds from wastewater. For this purpose, a model compound, pyridine, was treated in a high-pressure batch autoclave at mild conditions of temperature and pressure. Copper and cobalt are relatively inexpensive catalytic material and have shown higher conversion efficiencies. Both CuSO₄ and Cu-Co/C have optimum activity at an initial pH 4 of the pyridine solution. After 2 h of reaction time, % conversion with CuSO₄ (75.1 %) was more in comparison to Cu-Co/C (71.8 %) using 5 mg/l catalyst concentration at 160 ^oC and 9 bar total pressure.