Effectiveness of photochemical and sonochemical processes in degradation of Basic Violet 16 (BV16) dye from aqueous solutions

In this study, degradation of basic violet 16 (bv16) by ultraviolet radiation (uv), ultrasonic irradiation (us), uv/h2o2and us/h2o2 processes was investigated in a laboratory-scale batch photoreactor equipped with a 55wimmersed-type low-pressure mercury vapor lamp and a sonoreactor with high frequency (130khz) plate typetransducer at 100w of acoustic power. the effects of initial dye concentration, concentration of h2o2 and solutionph and presence of na2so4 was studied on the sonochemical and photochemical destruction of bv16 in aqueousphase. the results indicated that in the uv/h2o2 and us/h2o2 systems, a sufficient amount of h2o2 was necessary,but a very high h2o2 concentration would inhibit the reaction rate. the optimum h2o2 concentration was achievedin the range of 17 mmol/l at dye concentration of 30 mg/l. a degradation of 99% was obtained with uv/h2o2within 8 minutes while decolorization efficiency by using uv (23%), us ( < 6%) and us/h2o2( < 15%) processes werenegligible for this kind of dye. pseudo-first order kinetics with respect to dyestuffs concentrations was found to fitall the experimental data.