Treatment of Sugar Industry Wastewater by an

Electrochemical Method
Ülker Bakır Öğütveren*, Yusuf Yavuz, A. Sava Koparal
Anadolu Üniversitesi, Çevre Sorunları Uygulama ve Ara tırma Merkezi, Eski ehir, Turkey
*uogutver@anadolu.edu.tr

The sugar industry processes sugar cane and sugar beet to manufacture edible sugar.
Sugar manufacturing is a highly seasonal industry, with season lengths of about 6 to 18
weeks for beets and 20 to 32 weeks for cane. Numerous sources of wastewaters exist in
a beet-sugar plant. Among these is the flume water that is used for washing beets
soaked with dirt. Flume water is also used as a means of conveying beets between
processes. The process wastewater originates from the flushing of exhausted cossettes
from the diffusion battery cells and then the partial dewatering of the exhausted pulp.
The flume water represents about 70% of the total waste volume [1].
Electrochemical treatment of sugar industry wastewater using boron doped diamond
anode in a bipolar trickle tower reactor was investigated in this study. The effects of
supporting electrolyte concentration, current density, and flow rate on the removal
efficiency were investigated. Molasses, a by-product of sugar industry, is being used to
produce ethanol in this plant. Wastewater is discharged to the receiving water after
only plain settling in settling tanks.
As a result of the study, initial COD of 1005 mg/L was decreased to the final COD of
46mg/L with a removal efficiency of 95.4% in the presence of 0.2 M NaSO4 at the
current density of 10 mA/cm2 as also shown in Fig. 1. According to the results, BDD
anode was found successful for the degradation of sugar industry wastewater.

Key Words: Sugar industry wastewater, Anodic oxidation, BDD anode

100
COD removal eff., %

80

60

40 i=4 mA/cm2
i=7 mA/cm2
20
i=10 mA/cm2
0
0 30 60 90 120 150 180
Time, min

Fig.1. Variation of removal efficiency with time.

References

[1] Dilek, F.B., Yetis, U., Gökçay, C.F., 2003. Water savings and sludge minimization
in a beet-sugar factory through re-design of the wastewater treatment facility, Journal
of Cleaner Production 11, 327–331.