Electrocoagulation efficiency of the tannery effluent treatment using aluminium electrodes

摘要

An electro-coagulation laboratory scale system using aluminium plates electrodes was studied fornthe removal of organic and inorganic pollutants as a by-product from leather finishing industrialnprocess. A fractional factorial 23 experimental design was applied in order to obtain optimalnvalues of the system state variables. The electro-coagulation (EC) process efficiency was basednon the chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, total suspended solid, total fixed solid, totalnvolatile solid, and chemical element concentration values. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for finalnpH, total fixed solid (TFS), turbidity and Ca concentration have confirmed the predicted modelsnby the experimental design within a 95% confidence level. The reactor working conditions closento real effluent pH (7.6) and electrolysis time in the range 30–45 min were enough to achieventhe cost effective reduction factors of organic and inorganic pollutants’ concentrations.nAn appreciable improvement in COD removal efficiency was obtained for electro-coagulationntreatment. Finally, the technical-economical analysis results have clearly shown that the electrocoagulationnmethod is very promising for industrial application.