Performance of Electrocoagulation Process Using Iron and Aluminum Electrodes with and without Perforations

Abstract

Electrocoagulation process is widely used for the removal of pollutants from the industrial wastewater. In the present study, an attempt was made to investigate the performance of electrocoagulation process using alu-minum and iron electrodes to treat the metal ions present in the synthetic galvanic wastewater. The electrodes used are with and without perforations and it was observed that the efficiency of electrodes with perforation (80 %) was higher than without perforations (50 %). The removal efficiency of heavy metal ions increased with retention time and direct current. The optimized values of residence time, voltage, pH, current, electrode spacing were 160 min, 6 V, 5, 0.2 A, and 3 cm, respectively. The maximum removal percentage of nickel and copper ions using perforated iron electrodes was 90.7 % and 86.0 %, respectively, and for chromium using a combination of perforated iron and aluminum electrodes it was 93.1 %. The removal of metal ions followed pseudo second order kinetic model with current dependent parameters.