I'm a student in the final year of M.Sc in Environmental engineering (wastewater treatment), I would like to work on a project focused on the Combined chemical oxidation and biological like: combined TiO2 (or anything like that) photocatalysis and RBC process, electrochemical treatment/biological process, Hybrid of Fenton-photo-Fenton and sequencing batch reactor, electrochemical, wet air oxidation and …
I am really frustrated, I have started my research for my master thesis 4 months ago and I have to submit the final draft after 2 months.
I was looking for something related to Feasibility of using combined chemical and biological processes for the treatment of highly contaminated petroleum refinery wastewater( recalcitrant or refractory compounds). I plan on reading some literature related to my work and perhaps find a gap for novelty in my thesis
However, i don’t wanna a month later and after I submitted the proposal and started to read deeply about the topic; I found that exactly the same research had already done by other students and what I was supposed to do was 100% repeating what they already had done years ago.
I Would like to ask you to borrow me about 10 minutes of your time and answer my question. Is anyone able to help me with this?
What topic can I use for my thesis?
Any prospective leads and suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Thank you.
Saeed Molaei
Feasibility of using combined chemical and biological processes for the treatment of highly contaminated petroleum refinery wastewater
The present study deals with the treatment of real oil or petroleum refinery wastewater using Advanced oxidation process(AOPs) followed by biological processes for treatment of recalcitrant or refractory compounds in wastewater
Actually, feasibility studies in terms of Biodegradability Index (B.I.) were undertaken to see the efficacy of biological treatment, subsequent to Advanced oxidation treatment.
Biological processes are usually most efficient for degrading pollutants occurring in wastewater. Refractory and toxic compounds contained limit their applicability. In such cases combinations with chemical oxidation processes may improve the overall efficiency and efficacy. Most suitable oxidation processes for combination with biological treatment are wet air oxidation, ozonation, hydrogen peroxide treatment and other advanced oxidation processes. Most effective are OH-radicals produced in all these oxidation processes. Chemical oxidation produces intermediates with usually improved biodegradability. Process combinations may be serial or with recycling between chemical oxidation and biological treatment.
Hello Mr. Molaei
I hope the attached article will help you to choose the best type of bioreactor for wastewater treatment.
Regards
Dear Saeed,
This is one of the main concerns for students who must determine their own research topic. So, please do not be frustrated. I know that you are looking for a new, yet efficient, way to refine one of the most complex sewage. But please note that your time is only one year, and this time is not enough to carry out the number of tests. My suggestion is to combine two of them, such as oxidation and biological methods, and then focus only on them and all the effective parameters. I can tell without any information and only on the basis of my experience that there are still thousands of experiments that can be done on their combination that nobody has done yet. So you do not have to create a new method, but just do experiments that others have not done. I'll give you a simple example. Changes in temperature, pH, flow rate and feed concentration! That is, even if another researcher has checked the parameter effect, you can change the parameter check range. This is also a new experiment. Please do not drown yourself in a world of papers and methods of purification. What I've done before.
Good Luck
All you need to do is to comprehensively study the thesis you mention, seeking a research gap. There must be something you can do to improve an already existing project/work either in terms of performance or economic viability. I wish you all the best in your career.
Dear Saeed,
Quite a lot of work has been done in this area as you have found out already. My advice is that you probably find one group of compounds e.g aromatics or you could be particular and narrow down to just xylene or benzene removal and focus on that. Tweaking some parameters, use of DOE or even a comparative analysis between biological and chemical might be interesting work. A proper combined study feels like you might need PhD time to carry out extensive work
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