Degradation of some toxic compounds from olive mill waste water by lime pretreatment and catalytic ozonation

Olive Stone and olive mill wastewater generated by the olive oil extracting industry were major pollutants not only Turkey but also other Mediterranean countries for thousands of years. In the present study, it was aimed to investigate the potential uses of the whole olive stone as catalyst and reduce the pollution level of olive mill wastewater to discharge standards. Lime pretreatment was used to reduce of suspended solids of olive mill waste water. A novel activated carbon prepared from olive stone, an agricultural solid by-product was used as catalyst for degradation of some phenolic componds from olive mill waste water. In this study, comparing with initial values of COD, TOC and total phenol content of olive mill wastewater 10, 80 and 67 times improvement has been achieved, respectively.