Electrochemical coagulation of treated wastewaters for reuse

摘要

In this work, the disinfection capability of electrocoagulation with iron and aluminium electrodes is studied. To do this, two different effluents of conventional municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are treated. Results show that electrocoagulation is able to reduce satisfactorily chemical oxygen demand, turbidity and nutrients and it allows increasing significantly the water quality. Likewise, it does not affect conductivity (just the contrary conventional coagulation-flocculation treatment) and helps to buffer pH in a value around 8. Precipitation, floc enmeshment and adsorption seem to be the primary mechanisms in this process. Regarding the variation of faecal coliforms, this technique behaves as a disinfection technology and allows increasing the efficiencies of WWTP processes in a very cheaper way. Energy consumption lower than 0.2 kWhm~(-3) is required to attain standard disinfection levels.