Investigation of the Electrocoagulation Treatment Technique for the Separation of Oil from Wastewater

摘要

Oily wastewater represents a dangerous threat when discharged to receiving bodies. This research investigates electrocoagulation as a simple, effective and economic technique for treatment of such wastewater. Bench scale reactors were used to evaluate the factors that may affect the treatment of a wastewater obtained from Kuwait Gulf Oil Company. Aluminum was used as a sacrificial anode. Electrodes were arranged at different configurations (horizontal, vertical and vertical anode with horizontal cathode) to select the optimal one. Other tested operation parameters include time of treatment, current density, the distance between the electrodes, anode tubes diameters and the electrolyte concentration of the emulsion. The treatment efficiency was evaluated by comparing the initial and final turbidity of the treated wastewater. Experimental results indicate that the efficiency of oil separation increased with the increase of the treatment time, current density, anode diameter and concentration of electrolyte. However, it decreased with the increase of distance between electrodes. The horizontal arrangement gave the best results. The data shows that oil separation increases slightly with increasing temperature. The optimum time and current density for oil separation was determined as 30 min and 30 mA cm^?2, respectively. These parameters reduced the turbidity of the wastewater from 95-5 NTU.