Development of an irradiation device for electron beam wastewater treatment

When domestic or industrial effluents with synthetic compounds are disposed without an adequate treatment, they impact negatively the environment with damages to aquatic life and for the human being. Both population and use of goods and services that contribute for the hazardous waste are growing. Hazardous regulations are becoming more restrictive and technologies, which do not destroy these products, are becoming less acceptable. The electron beam radiation process is an advanced oxidation process, that produces highly reactive radicals resulting in mineralization of the contaminant. In this work was developed an irradiation system in order to optimize the interaction of electron beam delivered from the accelerator with the processed effluent. It is composed by an irradiation device where the effluent presents to the electron beam in an up flow stream and a process control unit that uses the calorimetric principle. The developed irradiation device has a different configuration from the devices used by others researchers that are working with this technology. It was studied the technical and economic feasibility, comparing with the literature the results of the irradiation device demonstrated that it has a superior performance, becoming an process for use in disinfection and degradation of hazardous organic compounds of wastewater from domestic and industrial origin, contributing as an alternative technology for Sanitary Engineering. (author)