ELECTROCOAGULATION AND RELATED PROCESSES - AN EVOLVING TRANS-BORDER WASTEWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGY FOR REUSE AND RECYCLE IN THE METALS AND ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES

摘要

Research through international collaboration funded by USAID-TIES Program between three Mexican and two US universities is advancing technology of mobile advanced wastewater treatment technology. Electrocoagulation is a growing water treatment technology that is being restricted by a lack of knowledge of the electrochemical processes involved under voltage conditions beyond the stability limits of water. There exists a need for correlations between operational parameters and the resulting material products as well as control and optimization of the reactor parameters. Experimental and modeling results from electrocoagulation of aqueous NaCl solutions of varying chemical characteristics using bench scale multi-electrode systems to gain greater fundamental understanding of the complex processes involved will be presented. X-ray Diffraction, Scanning Electronic Microscope and Mossbauer Spectroscopy have been employed to characterize the different iron phases in the electrocoagulation products. Work to translate the findings to mobile water treatment process units will be discussed with actual performance data on metal industry waste streams.