The study investigated the efficiency and cost effectiveness of solar-assisted photochemical processes in comparison with advance oxidation processes (AOPs) for the textile effluents treatment. Efficiency of UV irradiation alone for one hour in removing color was almost double in comparison to solar radiation alone for effluents of different dye concentrations (E1>E2>E3). For coupled UV/H2O2 process, there was higher color removal efficiency obtained for effluent E3 (85%) as compared to E2 (70%) and E1 (57%), while E1 showed higher COD removal efficiency
(70%) as compared to E2 (50%) and E3 (62%). However, the efficiency of solar/H2O2 for COD removal was comparable to UV/ H2O2, i.e., E2 (57%) and E3 (53%). In the case of UV and solar-assisted photo-Fenton processes, removal efficiency of the UV process was further increased as approached to almost 90% removal for E1; on the other hand, the solar-assisted process efficiency remained the same. The relative efficiencies of AOPs were found to be in the order
of UV assisted photo-Fenton process>UV/H2O2>UV alone. Although, solar-assisted Fenton treatments were relatively low and slow but without any energy consumption in comparison to high energy consumption of UV. Among the UV processes, UV assisted photo-Fenton treatment appeared to have better color removal efficiency with energy requirements of 5 kWh/m3, 8 kWh/m3 and 3 kWh/m3 for E1, E2 and E3, respectively.
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