Catalytic Wet Air Oxidation (CWAO) of Industrial Wastewaters: Mechanistic Evidences, Catalyst Development and Kinetic Modeling. Chapter 10 in Frontiers in Wastewater Treatment and Modelling.

Huge water consumptions and pollutants releases in the environment urge effective water decontamination technologies, fostering extensive recycle and reuse of industrial process-water and wastewater. The heterogeneous catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) offers a practical solution to the problem of decontamination of industrial effluents characterised by high concentration of toxic-refractory compounds, which are also detrimental for the active sludge of biological systems. Therefore, this work shows the superior CWAO performance of a new class of nanostructured MnCeOx catalysts toward the mineralization of some common toxic and refractory industrial pollutants. Mechanistic and kinetic evidences are summarised into a Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction mechanism, leading to a formal kinetic model predicting the CWAO performance of nanostructured MnCeOx catalysts and optimum reaction conditions.