Techno-Economic Assessment and Process Design Considerations for Industrial-Scale Photocatalytic Wastewater Treatment

Industrial deployment of photocatalysis for recalcitrant wastewater treatment remains constrained by economic uncertainty and scale-up limitations. This study first reviews the current technological routes and application status of photocatalytic processes and then addresses the key obstacles through a quantitative techno-economic assessment (TEA) of a full-scale (10,000 m3/d) photocatalytic wastewater treatment plant. A process-level model integrating mass- and energy-balance calculations with equipment sizing was developed for a 280 kW UVA-LED reactor using Pt/TiO2 as the benchmark catalyst. The framework quantifies capital (CAPEX) and operating (OPEX) expenditures and evaluates the overall economic…