Treatment of Wastewater Containing Tartaric Acid Copper Complex by UV/O₃

To solve the problem that concentration of copper in electroplating wastewater is hard to meet the strict discharge standard by chemistry precipitation due to the existence of tartaric acid, this study aims to remove copper in tartaric acid copper complex (ρTartaric acid=418 mg/L, ρCuSO4·5H2O=196 mg/L) by UV/O3 at different irradiation time and initial pH. Results indicated that the effluent concentration of copper could fall below 0.3 mg/L and meet the discharge standard of Taihu lake watershed at the best reaction conditions of t=120 min, ρO3=19.2 mg/L, QO3=1 L/min, initial pH=3.0 and precipitation pH=9.5.