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Influence of Operating Parameters On Phosphate Removal From Waterby Electrocoagulation Using Aluminum Electrodes
Influence of Operating Parameters On Phosphate Removal From Waterby Electrocoagulation Using Aluminum Electrodes
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Treatment of water containing phosphate by electrocoagulation has been studied in a laboratory batch
Received 18 July 2013 reactor. The effect of operating parameters on both phosphate removal efficiency and pH evolution has
Received in revised form 18 December 2013 been investigated. Influence of distance between electrodes, current density, initial pH, temperature
Accepted 21 December 2013
and conductivity has been extensively studied in a wide range of values. The results show that the
Available online 3 January 2014
removal efficiency depends on the electrical charges; the same efficiency is obtained with low current
density with long time of treatment, or higher current intensity with short treatment time. The time evo-
Keywords:
lution of the pH during the treatment strongly depends on the operating conditions but the final pH is
Electrocoagulation
Phosphate
more or less the same due to the buffering effect of AlðOHÞ3 =AlðOHÞ
4 mixture. Effects of the temperature,
Aluminum electrodes often disregarded in the literature shows that treatment rate is strongly increased with temperature
pH whereas conductivity near 1 mS/cm is enough to ensure reasonable treatment rate. The electrical energy
Energy consumption consumption (around 4 Kw/m3) is acceptable to achieve 90% of conversion but lower current density is
Temperature effect preferable because of the lower voltage drop.
Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1383-5866/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2013.12.030
A. Attour et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 123 (2014) 124–129 125
Table 1
Review of the major contributions dealing with treatment of phosphate containing in water by electrocoagulation.
Fig. 4. Phosphate removal efficiency versus electric charge for 5 different currents
the two electrodes. As the distance increases, the resistivity of the density between 2 and 18 mA/cm2 ð½PO34 0 ¼ 100 mg P/L, [NaCl] = 6.5 mM, pHi = 7,
solution increases, therefore, the amount of metal getting dis- T = 30 °C, d = 0.5 cm.
solved into the solution also decreases. Hence, the removal effi-
ciency decreases with an increase in electrode gap. Zhang et al.
efficiency versus time for 5 values of the current density between
[27] have estimated the effect of several electrode gaps from
2 and 18 mA/cm2. The kinetics is very sensitive to this parameter
10 mm to 60 mm on phosphate removal from landscape water.
and the treatment is faster when the current density is higher.
The maximal phosphate removal efficiency decreased from 86.4%
Many papers focused on the optimal conditions for the treatment
to 63% except for a gap of 25 mm for which the efficiency reached
including time of treatment and operating current density. In fact
90%. The reason of this exception is not clearly explained.
these parameters are linked together. Fig. 4 represents the phos-
phate removal efficiency versus the electric charge for the different
3.2. Influence of current density current densities. This representation shows that the kinetics is
affected by these parameters and several couples of operating time
Current density is the most sensitive operating parameter of and current density can be selected to obtain the same abatement
electrocoagulation process. Fig. 3 shows the phosphate removal when the charge remains the same. However, with higher current
A. Attour et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 123 (2014) 124–129 127
Fig. 5. pH versus electric charge for 5 different currents density between 2 and
18 mA/cm2 (½PO3
4 0 ¼ 100 mg P/L, [NaCl] = 6.5 mM, pHi = 7, T = 30 °C, d = 0.5 cm). Fig. 7. Phosphate removal efficiency versus time for different initial pH
(½PO3 2
4 0 ¼ 100 mg P/L, [NaCl] = 6.5 mM, T = 30 °C, d = 0.5 cm, i = 10 mA/cm ).
Fig. 6. Views of electrode surface at different current densities: white layer on the anode at low current densities (a) 2 mA/cm2 (similar aspect for i = 6 mA/cm2), (b) 10 mA/
cm2, (c) the film is not visible on the anode at 18 mA/cm2 (similar aspect for 18 mA/cm2) and (d) oxidation of the cathode (brown color) at 14 mA/cm2 and 18 mA/cm2. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
128 A. Attour et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 123 (2014) 124–129
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