Abstract
The conventional open ponding system employed for palm oil mill agro-effluent (POME) treatment fails to lower the levels of organic pollutants to the mandatory standard discharge limits. In this work, carbon doped black TiO
2
(CB-TiO
2
) and carbon-nitrogen co-doped black TiO
2
(CNB-TiO
2
) were synthesized via glycerol assisted sol-gel techniques and employed for the remediation of treated palm oil mill effluent (TPOME). Both the samples were anatase phase, with a crystallite size of 11.09–22.18 nm, lower bandgap of 2.06–2.63 eV, superior visible light absorption ability, and a high surface area of 239.99–347.26 m
2
/g. The performance of CNB-TiO
2
was higher (51.48%) compared to only (45.72%) CB-TiO
2
. Thus, the CNB-TiO
2
is employed in sonophotocatalytic reactions. Sonophotocatalytic process based on CNB-TiO
2
, assisted by hydrogen peroxide (H
2
O
2
), and operated at an ultrasonication (US) frequency of 30 kHz and 40 W power under visible light irradiation proved to be the most efficient for chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal. More than 90% of COD was removed within 60 min of sonophotocatalytic reaction, producing the effluent with the COD concentration well below the stipulated permissible limit of 50 mg/L. The electrical energy required per order of magnitude was estimated to be only 177.59 kWh/m
3
, indicating extreme viability of the proposed process for the remediation of TPOME.