Backgrounds and Objectives: Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one of the common groups of contaminants encountered in the industrial activities, emitted through air stream into the atmosphere. To prevent the human and environmental health from the adverse effects of VOCs, air streams containing VOCs need to be treated before discharging to environment. This study was aimed at investigating the catalytic ozonation process for removing xylene from a contaminated air stream.
Materials and Methods: In the present work, a bench scale experimental setup was constructed and used for catalytic ozonation of xylene. The performance of catalytic ozonation process was compared with that of single adsorption and ozonation in removal of several concentration of xylene under the similar experimental conditions.
Results: The results indicated that the efficiency of catalytic ozonation was higher than that of single adsorption and ozonation in removal of xylene. The emerging time and elimination capacity of xylene for inlet concentration of 300 ppm was 1.4 and 5.8 times of those in adsorption system. The activated carbon acted as catalyst in the presence of ozone and thus attaining the synergistic effect for xylene degradation.
Conclusion: catalytic ozonation process is an efficient technique the treatment of air streams containing high concentrations of xylene. The adsorption systems can also be simply retrofitted to catalytic ozonation process and thereby improving their performance for treating VOCs.