Treatment of Pond Water by Electrocoagulation Process UsingIron Electrodes

Abstract

The electrocoagulation (EC) process is an electrochemical treatment that can be used for the removal of contaminants from wastewater. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of EC for pond water treatment. Batch experiments were conducted using iron electrodes and an 800 ml working volume. The effects of reaction time, applied voltage, electrode area, and solution temperature on the removal of contaminants from pond water. These contaminants including total dissolved solids (TDS), calcium (Ca), sodium (Na), and turbidity. The reaction time was varied between 30 and 90 min, applied voltage between 10 and 30 V, electrode area between 5 × 3 and 10 × 6 cm2, and temperature between 30 and 70 °C. The results showed that the removal of TDS and Ca has been improved by increasing reaction time, while removal of Na showed small change between 30 and 90 min. At 90 min, the efficiency of TDS removal was 49.09%, the efficiency of Na removal was 35.19%, the efficiency of Ca removal was 79.25%, and the efficiency of turbidity removal was 95.95%. In addition, the removal of contaminant was improved by increasing the applied voltage. The highest efficiency was reported at 30 V with a value of 46.00% for TDS, 41.67% for Na, 45.28% for Ca, and 96.61% for turbidity. Also, the removal efficiencies was increased by increasing solution temperature from 30 to 70 °C. The highest values was reported at 70 °C, the highest removal efficiencies were reported at values of 29.27%, 47.22%, 69.81%, and 98.34% for TDS, Na, Ca, and turbidity respectively. The results demonstrates that the EC process using iron electrodes can effectively reduce the measured contaminants and turbidity under the investigated operating conditions.