Abstract

To reduce extensive energy costs of the internal recycling for the purpose of denitrification in the advanced wastewater treatment, a post-treatment process using an electro-coagulation to treat nitrate in the secondary effluents is evaluated in this study. Removals of phosphorus and organics in the secondary effluents by the electro-coagulation were also evaluated to propose an alternative advanced wastewatert treatment process. A series of experiments of the electro-coagulation were carried out with the following 4 different samples: synthetic solution containing nitrate only, synthetic solution containing nitrate as well as phosphorus, secondary effluents from activated sludge cultivated in laboratory, and secondary effluents from real wastewater treatment plants. Removals of nitrate and phosphorus in the synthetic solution were 30 and 97 % respectively, which verified the feasibility of the process. Removals of nitrate, phosphorus and COD in the secondary effluents from the cultivated sludge in laboratory were 49, 90 and 19 % respectively. Removal efficiency of the total nitrogen, nitrrate, phosphorus and COD in the secondary effluent from real wastewater treatment plant were 50, 61, 98 and 80 % respectively. The removal of the total nitrogen was less than the nitrate as expected, which is due to the formation of ammonia nitrogen in the cathode. But the proposed scheme could be an energy saving and alternative process for the advanced wastewater treatment if further studies for the process optimization are carried out.

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