Treatment of synthetic and battery industry wastewater by electrocoagulation

The applicability of electrocoagulation process for the treatment of battery industry wastewater and synthetic wastewater containing copper, lead, nickel and zinc was investigated in this work. The electrocoagulation experiments were carried out in an electrochemical reactor using a bipolar aluminum electrodes arranged in parallel. Experiments were carried out at voltage of 9, 12 and 15 volts, pH of 3, 7 and 10, initial ion concentration of 50, 150, 250 mg/l and contact time of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 minutes. Effects of operating parameters such as contact time, pH, voltage, initial metal concentration were studied. For the single treatment of the synthetic wastewater, the optimum pH was 3 for copper, 10 for zinc and 7 for lead and nickel. The efficiency of removal increased with the increase in voltage, time and initial metal ion concentration. The process was successfully applied in the treatment of an industrial effluent from a local battery producing company where the concentrations of copper, lead, zinc and nickel were reduced below the permissible limits at 60 minutes. The result of this study shows that electrocoagulation process is a reliable and efficient method of removing heavy metals from industrial wastewater.

Author(s): Joseph T. Nwabanne1 and Anthony C. Okoye2

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