Disposal of olive mill wastewater with DC arc plasma method

Olive mill wastewater is an industrial waste, generated as a byproduct of olive oil production process and generally contains components such as organic matter, suspended solids, oil, and grease. Although various methods have been developed to achieve the disposal of this industrial wastewater, due to the low cost, the most common disposal application is the passive storage in the lagoons. The main objective of this study is to reduce pollution parameters in olive mill wastewater and draw water to discharge limits by using plasma technology. Plasma-assisted disposal of olive mill wastewater method could be an alternative disposal technique when considering potential utilization of treated water in agricultural areas and economic value of flammable plasma gas which is the byproduct of disposal process. According to the experimental results, the rates of COD (chemical oxygen demand) and BOD (biological oxygen demand) of olive mill wastewater are decreased by 94.42% and 95.37%, respectively. The dissolved oxygen amount is increased from 0.36 to 6.97 mg/l. In addition, plasma gas with high H₂ content and treated water that can be used in agricultural areas for irrigation are obtained from non-dischargeable wastewater.