Objective
The groundwater underneath the community of Bad Fischau-Brunn cannot be used for drinking water because it is polluted with perchloroetylene (PCE). At present the PCE concentration has a level of 60-80 mg/l, while the limit value for drinking water in Austria is 10 mg/l. Without treatment, therefore, this water cannot be used as drinking water. Current state-of-the-art technology is filtration with activated carbon. However this merely leads to a transfer of pollution from water to coal. Applying this process also results in CO2 emissions. Moreover, there is always a risk of dioxin being produced in such a process. The present proposal is based on a combination of ozone and electron beam irradiation to produce OH-free radicals and to use them to clean the water.
PCE is very persistent in water. Even such strong oxidants like ozone react slowly with PCE. Only the extremely short-living OH-free radicals are able to oxidise PCE. In such a process the PCE will be mineralised, i.e. the organic pollutant is transferred into innocuous bicarbonate and chloride ions. Bicarbonate and chloride ions are contained in every drinking water as natural solutes. The groundwater to be treated already contains 251 mg/l bicarbonate and 8 mg/l chloride which is much more than the amount of bicarbonate and chloride that results from the mineralisation of 80 mg/l PCE. The increase of bicarbonate and chloride can therefore be ignored. The oxygen concentration in the water increases because of the ozone introduction and additionally no CO2 emissions burden the atmosphere.
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
2721 Bad Fischau-Brunn
Austria