A Comparative Study of Electro and Chemical Coagulation for Efficient Removal of Lignin and Some Other Pollutants from Industrial Wastewater

Abstract

The industrial factories especially pulp and paper as well as textile effluents are characterized by high amount of lignin. In addition, food industrial effluents contain fats, oil and grease, nitrogen phosphors, potassium and other pollutants. The producing wastewater containing lignin and several other contaminants becomes making many problems in the environment. The present work involves application of an electrochemical treatment (EC) to remove lignin and other contaminants from the industrial wastewater. Electrochemical coagulation cell was established and used for this purpose. The study was performed to check the removal efficiency of lignin and some other contaminants such as biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS) and total suspended solids (TSS) from wastewater. The percentage removal of BOD, COD and TSS from wastewater by electrochemical coagulation are compared with those obtained using chemical coagulation with ferric chloride and both. The removal efficiency of these parameters when using electrocoagulation was 53%, 71% and 98% respectively. While the chemical coagulation by using ferric chloride was 42, 32 and 35 % respectively. The obtained results in this work reveal that electrochemical coagulation procedure is more effective than chemical coagulation when used in the treatment of industrial wastewater. In addition, the using of both technique in the same time give an excellent water clarity.