Thermally activated persulfate treatment and mineralization of a recalcitrant high TDS petrochemical wastewater

Thermally activated persulfate efficiency for the treatment of a recalcitrant high TDS wastewater was investigated. The specific character of studied wastewater was high TDS content of around 23820 mg/L and BOD5/COD ratio of 0.07. Effective operational parameters including initial pH values of 3–9, reaction temperature of 40–80°C and persulfate concentrations of 0.5–5 g/L for COD removal were investigated in batch mode experiments. Removal efficiency was pH and temperature dependent. The COD and TOC removal of 94.3% and 82.8% were obtained at persulfate concentration of 4 g/L, initial pH value of 5 and temperature of 70°C after 180 min for initial COD concentration of 1410 mg/L. The pseudo first-order kinetic model was best fitted with COD removal (R²  = 0.94).