Most of the wastewater treatment facilities in the US treat through the secondary processing stage, as required by the Clean Water Act. While these facilities are required to report certain water parameters, the quality of discharged water varies substantially according to location, volume of water and type of treatment. Due to the growing list of organic pollutants now commonly detected in wastewaters, advanced oxidation technologies, which employ the hydroxyl radical oxidant, have garnered attention. In recent studies, caffeine molecules were shown to react 100% efficiently with hydroxyl radicals in pure water; the efficiency drops in treated wastewaters, but depends on the water make-up. Using caffeine as the probe molecule, secondary treated wastewaters from Southern California and Northwest Indiana were tested for its degradation, using radiation chemistry to generate hydroxyl radicals. The hydroxyl radical efficiencies showed significant differences between the two wastewaters, signifying the possibility of using this hydroxyl radical reaction probe for water quality assessment.

Water quality assessments using hydroxyl radical probes in gamma irradiations

244th National Meeting (2012)

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