MODELING AND SIMULATION OF A PHOTOCATALYTIC REMOVAL OF AMMONIACAL NITROGEN USING CARBON CATALYST

• Main Author: AMIRAH AFIQAH BINTI AMAN, -
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak 2022
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39258/1/FYP_Amirah%20Afiqah%20Aman%20-%2024pages.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39258/5/Amirah%20Afiqah%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39258/

The rapid urbanization in Malaysia has led to the rise in solid waste generation which eventually increase the generation of leachate in landfill. Apparently, the leachate in landfill comprises of organic and inorganic substances in which its properties depend on the landfill age. In the recent years, advanced oxidation process (AOP) has gained substantial attention in wastewater treatment for pollutant removal. Photocatalysis which is categorized under AOPs is seen to be a promising technique in eliminating a wide range of contaminants. Substantial amount of study of photocatalysis in wastewater treatment has been conducted in laboratory based experimental but has very limited study on simulation-based experiment. This study aimed to simulate the behavior of the photocatalytic removal of ammoniacal nitrogen using carbon catalyst through process simulation. By that, a set of model equations including the hydrodynamic, radiative transfer equation and kinetics reaction were developed based on the literature. Process simulation was performed in ANSYS R1 2022 Workbench to simulate the hydrodynamic field, radiation field and species distribution in the designed annular photoreactor. The comparison study between the simulation results and existing experimental data shows that the model developed has a better agreement at higher flow rate of the fluid. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis was also conducted to study the effect of initial concentration of ammoniacal nitrogen on its removal efficiency. It was observed that at higher concentration of ammoniacal nitrogen, the removal efficiency is decreased. To conclude, all the objectives were achieved in this project and some recommendations were provided in order to improve the modeling and simulation study of the photocatalytic reaction for the application in the future studies.