Thermal Plasma as a Novel Technique for Water Decontamination

Abstract

One of the major problems that still confronts mankind is the purity of water, and the reprocessing and purification of wastewater from harmful organic impurities is therefore a central task in current environmental and occupational safety. Among the impurities present in wastewater, organophosphorous, chlorinated aliphatic and aromatic chemicals, oil and other products are particularly hazardous. The complete oxidation of organic impurities present in water is one of the mostly accepted approaches to wastewater decontamination and can be achieved by conventional methods, such as ozonization or thermal oxidation of fuel combustion products. Moreover, new physicochemical methods, such as photocatalytic oxidation, high-voltage electric discharge and ultrasound treatment are also useful for water decontamination via oxidative conversion of organic impurities. However, each of these methods of harmful organic impurity oxidation has serious limitations. Analysis of the potential methods of wastewater decontamination through complete oxidation of harmful organic impurities shows that the most common disadvantages of existing approaches are very low energy output of active particles (at a level of 0.1-0.0 1 g per 1 kWh of consumed power) and low productivity, owing to low energy density per one unit of volume and low capacity of the sources used.