Treatment of Municipal Wastewater Using Electrocoagulation Process

Abstract

Treatment of Municipal wastewater by Electrocoagulation (EC) process using punched aluminium and zinc electrodes was studied in a batch EC cell reactor. Response surface methodology (RSM) based on Central Composite Design (CCD) was utilized to optimize the operating parameters for the removal of % Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and % Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) from Municipal Sewage. Effect of operating parameters such as Electrode Distance (x1), Electrolysis Time (x2) and Voltage (x3) has been optimized for the removal of TSS and COD. The prediction of removal percentage of TSS and COD in various Operational circumstances is done by using Quadratic model. The significance of each operating parameter was computed by Analysis of variance (ANOVA). To achieve the maximum removal of % TSS and % COD, the optimum conditions were Electrode distance(x1)—3 cm, Electrolysis Time (x2)—70.299 minute and Voltage (x3)—6.5V. It was observed that the performance of electrocoagulation process increased up to 61.45% for COD removal, and 73.73% for TSS removal using punched electrode compared to plane electrodes.