Estudio de análisis del ciclo de vida para la evaluación ambiental de procesos fotocatalíticos usados para la remoción de colorante azul BRL de agua.

Abstract

Dyes are the main pollutant in the textile industry; due to their complex chemical structure, their degradation is difficult, and they generate negative impacts on ecosystems and human health. For this reason, a comparative Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of two photocatalytic processes carried out on a laboratory scale was applied for the treatment of 1 m3 of synthetic water (functional unit). For this, a thin-film fixed-bed reactor (TFFBR) was proposed to scale all the data obtained from the aforementioned studies. The following scenarios were analyzed: TiO2 supported on PET immobilized by "dip coating" (Scenario A); TiO2 supported on glass fiber immobilized with silicone (Scenario B); and no actions (Scenario C). The LCA of both processes allowed identifying and visualizing impacts in different environmental categories that at first sight were not obvious. Even though the fiberglass treatment seemed to be more environmentally friendly, the results showed a greater environmental impact for this scenario in 9 of the 16 categories and a difference of 5.30 milipoints [mPt] was determined concerning the treatment with fiberglass. PET. In addition, it was evidenced that scenario C of no action presents the least impacts, and this may be attributed to the fact that not all the pollutants in a real effluent were considered. Therefore, the LCA represented a useful tool to objectively evaluate both studies based on Advanced Oxidation Processes, and it was applied to corroborate if the treatments were feasible solutions to the different environmental problems analyzed.