Influence of Electric Field Application with Decreasing One Sided Area of Electrodes on Electro-Osmotic Dewatering

Abstract

Electro-osmotic dewatering is typically operated under an electric field of direct current condition. In the process of electro-osmotic dewatering, water content in part of the material near the electrode opposite to the drainage surface is locally reduced, resulting in an increase of electrical contact resistance between the electrode and the material being dewatered. Then the efficiency of the electro-osmotic dewatering process is reduced remarkably. In order to improve the performance of electro-osmotic dewatering, it is supposed that a porous plate-type electrode used generally opposite to the drainage surface may be replaced to several rod-type electrodes, which are inserted into the material with dewatering. Using rod-type electrodes, the area of those electrodes becomes smaller than the plate-type electrode. From this point of view, electro-osmotic dewatering was experimentally investigated by decreasing one-sided area of electrodes, namely the area of the plate-type electrode opposite to the drainage surface, and the influence of such an electric field application on improvement of the dewatering process is discussed in this article.