Removal of Sulfates Containing in Water, by an Electro-Coagulation Process

Abstract

Guanajuato City population is 110,000 habitants. The city uses as a drinking water source two water reservoirs. These reservoirs supply approximately 40% of the city demand; the difference is pumped from a granular aquifer (alluvial deposits) which is recharged by percolation though fractured rocks in the highlands. To the reservoirs got drainage of abandoned mines. There are more than 20 mines that drain year round relevant amounts of sulfate waters. This problem is extreme during the dry season, when the only water in the creeks is the mine drainage water (Ramos-Arroyo, et al., 2011).This work presents a study of sulfate removal from a solution that simulates mine drainage in Guanajuato region (sulfate concentration 1400 ppm), by electrocoagulation (EC) method, using aluminum as a sacrifice anode in a lab scale electro-coagulation reactor. The couplings with a phytoremediation process improve better result. The removal of sulfates with the coupling of these two methods was satisfactory; decreasing the sulfate concentration around 90%. Results are also presented of sulfate removal from different abandoned mines drainage in Guanajuato, Mexico. Sulfate removal is followed during EC and the phytoremediation test, using HPLC and UV-vis.The electrocoagulation method has shown good results in the removal of arsenic and sulfates (Primitivo, et al., 2014). This work presents also the results with different sulfate concentrations, types of water and the coupling of the EC method with another different method ( phytoremediation), to reduce costs and increase the percentage of removal of sulfates.We thank the financial support given by CONACYT-CONCYTEG through the project GTO-2012-C04-195057