Abstract

The introduction of invasive marine species into new environments by the ballast water of ships has been identified as one of the four greatest threats to the world’s oceans. Many technologies have been developed for ballast water treatment among which electrolytic treatment method has been taken as the most promising one. The concentration of total residual oxidant was an important parameter to treat ballast water for electrolytic technology. In this paper, the effect of temperature and organic carbon on the decay of total residual oxidant in neutral electrolyzed water was investigated. The results showed that the total residual oxidant at 25 ⁰C decayed faster than that at lower temperature. Glucose and citrate could promote the decay of total residual oxidant while sucrose had no effect on total residual oxidant. For particle organic carbon, chitosan could promote the decay of total residual oxidant, while corn starch had no effect on the decay of total residual oxidant. Our results indicated that when initial total residual oxidant was decided, the temperature and kind and concentration of organic carbon should be taken into account.