Treatment of Atrazine through Ozonation: Effect of Contact Time on COD and Atrazine Removal

In this work, degradation of atrazine, an herbicide, is explored through the advanced oxidation process of ozonation. Ozonation can degrade organic as well as inorganic compounds. The study evaluated and analyzed the effect of contact time of ozonation on concentration of atrazine removal as well as chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal of the treated sample. The study also analyzed the effect of initial pH on COD removal. The synthetic sample prepared was having an initial concentration of atrazine as 100 ppb with corresponding COD as 203mg/l. The atrazine removal efficiency was found to be increasing with the increase in ozonation time. Atrazine was observed to degrade more when the pH was alkaline. So, the initial pH was kept as 9.9 and the ozone dose was 9.8 mg/l. The optimum ozonation time was 40 minutes which resulted in COD removal of 55.40 % and atrazine removal of 36.33%. The results showed that atrazine is destroyed by ozone very rapidly.