Radiation-induced oxidation for water remediation

In contrary to drinking water which is well-defined waste water is a rather indefinite term. It usually is a mixture of individual substances with various reactivities and can be characterized only by group parameters such as TOC, AOX, UV-absorption a.s.o. The kinetics of transformation of such group parameters depend on their actual composition. Because this composition changes as the reaction proceeds no general kinetic laws based on group parameters can be formulated. In general the overall pollutant concentration in a waste water is rather high but still in a range (below 1 Mol/L) in which no direct action of the radiation occurs. Accordingly the pollutant decomposition is caused by free radical species only. For all data presented in this paper this condition was satisfied. (author)