Development of a method for calculating the entropy increase from organic oxidation in water environment through self-purification
Affiliation of Author(s):
环境与市政工程学院
Journal:
Desalination and Water Treatment
Key Words:
中文关键字:影响评价;有机物氧化;熵增;化学有效能,英文关键字:Impact assessment; Organic oxidation; Entropy incr
Abstract:
When a water body receives excess organic pollutants from external sources such as secondary effluent discharge, self-purification will occur and the water quality will be recovered to its background level. As the decomposition of organics will be accompanied by heat
loss in the water body, it will result in an entropy increase (ΔSC) according to the Second
law of thermodynamics. In order to develop a method for the quantitative calculation of
ΔSC, the molar chemical exergy loss (Δbx) was used as the surrogates of heat loss (ΔQ)
under an assumption that the excess organic pollutants were decomposed by chemical oxidation. By using 201 organic substances of known molecular structures, a good proportional
relation was found between Δbx and the theoretical organic carbon contents (ThOC) with
the proportional coefficients as kE = 52.576 kJ/g (R2 = 0.9724). Thus ΔSC could be calculated
according to the volume and the total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of the wastewater, and the background TOC concentration of the water body. The proposed method can
provide a useful tool for assessing the environmental impact of organic pollutant discharge
from the thermodynamic viewpoint.