Phenol Degradation in Water by Pulsed Streamer Corona Discharge and Fenton Reaction

Abstract—In this paper, results of phenol degradation in water induced by a positive pulsed streamer corona discharge are presented. A novelty of this work is studying an influence of the pulsed streamer corona discharge enhanced with the Fenton reaction on phenol degradation in the tap water. To our knowledge, the tap water has never been used before in such studies. The positive pulsed streamer corona discharge was generated between a stressed needle and a cylinder, both immersed in the water contaminated with phenol (0.62 mM). Iron ions in the form of FeSO4 (0.08 mM) were added to the water. They were supposed to enhance the phenol degradation through the Fenton reaction. It was found that the Fenton reaction enhanced significantly phenol degradation rate only in the distilled water of low conductivity (1 μS/cm). In the tap water, which has relatively high conductivity (600 μS/cm), the Fenton reaction was weak and had to be initiated by lowering the initial pH from alkaline (7.6) to acidic (4.1). During phenol degradation the water acidity increased due to organic acids, which were the secondary products of the phenol degradation. The primary products of the phenol degradation were dihydroxyphenols. Keywords—streamer corona discharge, water purification, Fenton reaction, phenol I