Waste Water Management - Coursework Example

It seems impossible that one universal method will be able to satisfy the situation, thus there are several methods and techniques that have been devised to detect and dispose off the organic pollutants. It is important to distinguish the effectiveness and robustness of a technology, while searching for the most efficient one amongst the various water treatment methods available in the market. The need is to overcome the environmental vulnerability, without sacrificing the performance levels of the water treatment techniques.

There are several technologies that present effectual solutions for the versatile water treatment issues but at the same time possess considerable flaws. For example, one of the most popularly used water treatment methods is with the help of activated carbon or zeolite surfaces. In this method, the contaminants are separated from the water by transferring them to relatively highly charged surface area of the water sample. The drawback of this method is that the pollutant needs to be disposed after the adsorbent is exhausted and often mixes in the water again.

Similarly other methods like, thermal oxidation treatment (extremely energy intensive), biological treatment (which has failed to provide results with high variation of pollutants), have not provided the research community with the desired results. This paper presents a review on the work done on photo catalytic oxidation reactions---a type of Advanced Oxidation Process (AOP's). It presents the option of water treatment by the photo catalytic oxidation process in a UV reactor system to mineralize organic contaminants in water with the help of a semiconductor catalyst TiO2.

Thus the paper explores the recovery of water from waste water as an alternative water resource. It also throws light on the different water treatment technologies prevalent today and their comparison with the photo catalytic reactions. Using UV water treatment method for disinfection of waste water dates back to 1915 in the U.S. and since then the costs of the method have depreciated largely, thereby opening news roads and allowing the researchers to develop effective UV methods to disinfect water and wastewater.

In these oxidation methods, water is treated with the help of