Investigation and optimisation of turbidity and organic matter removal from surface water by electrocoagulation using response surface methodology

Abstract

In this research, the response surface methodology (RSM) based on the central composite design (CCD) was applied to assess and optimise the electrocoagulation (EC) process used to remove turbidity and organic matter from surface water. The effects of operating factors on turbidity and organic matter removal were investigated: reaction time, electric current, effective electrode surface area and inter-electrode distance. The potassium permanganate method was used to estimate the organic matter by chemical oxygen demand (CODMn). Analysis of variance showed that the quadratic models developed to assess the responses were found to have high coefficients of determination values of 0.9747 and 0.9851 for turbidity and CODMn removal efficiencies, respectively. The experimental results revealed that 99.08% of turbidity and 85.96% of CODMn were removed at optimal conditions. The results show that the selected operating factors are significant, and RSM effectively optimises turbidity and organic matter removal from surface water by EC process.