Electrochemical treatment of actual dye house effluents using electrocoagulation process directly powered by photovoltaic energy

Abstract

In the present work, the decolorization treatment of colored wastewaters produced from polyamide textile dyeing is studied using the electrocoagulation process with sacrificial aluminum electrodes. The electrical energy is obtained from a solar photovoltaic array by directly connecting it to the electrocoagulator without batteries. The photovoltaic electrocoagulation (PV-EC) system is made versatile according to the instantaneous solar irradiation by adjusting the wastewater flow rate to the current intensity supplied by the photovoltaic array. All the PV-EC experiments were performed in Kavala Institute of Technology (latitude 40˚55´, longitude 24˚22´, and altitude 138 m above the sea level). The purpose of this paper is to investigate all parameters affecting the efficiency of the process, such as initial wastewater pH, conductivity, operating time, flow rate, and solar irradiation. The efficiency of the EC process was followed by measurements of turbidity and chemical oxygen demand (COD). According to the obtained experimental results, fast and effective decolorization of the treated wastewater occurred in a few minutes of electroprocessing. Turbidity was quantitatively reduced from 103 to 0.2 NTU, amounting to a removal percentage of over 99%, whereas COD was reduced by 65%. The proposed process is appropriate for decolorizing colored textile dye wastewaters and especially for small applications in remote and isolated locations without connection to public electric grid.

Turbidity, dissolved Oxygen and pH measurement system for grey water treatment process by electrocoagulation

“…Several studies such as [2,6,7] define the different reactions and mechanisms involved during the EC but the main reaction involves a continuously dissolving anode due to the passage of electricity, releasing cations into the wastewater. On the other hand, considering several applications such as [10,11,12,13,14] the basic equipment to carry out the EC are 1) electrochemical reactor, 2) sacrificial electrodes and 3) direct current electrical power supply as shown in Figure 1.…”

Solar based hybrid combination of electrocoagulation and filtration process in domestic greywater treatment

“…Higher the current density and lower the flow rate than higher removal of pollutants given by Marmanis et al, the electrodes use in the EC process are Aluminum Al, Iron Fe. The electrode Al has more efficiency than electrode Fe (4,10) .…”

Management of solar energy to power electrochemical wastewater treatments

“…The use of photovoltaic (PV) energy to power electrochemical treatments has been widely reported in literature, showing promising remediation results [28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Nevertheless, the intermittency and unpredictability that characterize the solar power, increase the treatment time and reduces its efficiency, due to the fluctuating current supplied throughout a day [33].…”