COD removal, decolorization, and energy consumption of electrocoagulation as a wastewater treatment process

Abstract

The efficiency of color and COD removal in wastewater treatment is one of the essential factors. High color removal can encourage the reuse of wastewater as raw material in the recycled paper industry. Electrocoagulation (EC) process is effective pollutant removal in wastewater due to the adsorption, coagulation, and flotation. In this study, recycled paper industrial wastewater was used; this type of waste has a high content of disturbing pollutants, and treatment with electrocoagulation has not been widely carried out for this type of waste. EC treatment has a relatively high level of effectiveness to remove these pollutants; the influential factors studied include initial pH, applied current, supporting electrolyte, and processing time on a laboratory scale. The degradation of color, COD, and energy used was also evaluated. The best color removal was obtained as 100% at 80 minutes of process, and a COD concentration is 147 mg/L, and the energy used is 13.56 kWh/L.