Degradation of m-xylene solution using ultrasonic irradiation

Abstract This study is to apply ultrasound to remove m -xylene, a volatile compound from aqueous solutions which causes environmental damage. High frequency ultrasound was used to investigate the effect of different operational parameters, such as m -xylene initial concentration, ultrasonic frequency and ultrasonic power. The degradation rate of m -xylene was increased with decreasing initial concentration of m -xylene and increasing frequency and power. Optimal conditions include 26.07 mg/L, 806.3 kHz and 70 ± 1 W, in which MnO 2 , Cu 2+ , Fe 2+ , and H 2 O 2 had little or no effect on the degradation. Moreover, the effect of radical scavengers such as Na 2 CO 3 and t -butyl was not obvious, which indicates that direct pyrolysis inside the collapsing bubbles has an important role in m -xylene ultrasonic removal. In addition, the degradation of m -xylene was observed to behave under pseudo-first-order kinetics with different experimental conditions tested in the present work.