A Hydrodynamic and Mass Transfer Study Based on Modeling and Numerical Simulation of an Electrocoagulation Process for Sulfate Ions Removal

Abstract

This paper presents the modeling of sulfate ions removal from an actual sample of a mine drainage in Guanajuato, Mexico using multistage electrocoagulation reactor with aluminum as the sacrificial anode this work important to develop a treatment effective of removal. A hydrodynamic and mass transfer study was carried out using CFD (computational fluid dynamics), proposing the Eulerian model to different input concentrations were used for simulation of this process and comparing with the experimental work. The results of the hydrodynamic simulation study show that electrocoagulation reactor can operate at an inlet flow speed from 0.00925 to 0.037 m/s, and the Reynolds number profile shows that flow has a behavior laminar. The percentage of sulfate removal for the simulation for the initial concentration of 1288 mg L-1, varies from 74.21 to 66.40 % and consumption energy goes from 0.080 to 0.3196 KWhm-3.