The phosphate removal efficiency electrocoagulation wastewater using iron and aluminum electrodes

Abstract

Effects of electrolysis duration, initial phosphate concentrations and supporting electrolyte concentrations on the phosphate removal efficiency by electrocoagulation using either aluminum or iron electrodes were investigated in this study. All experiments were performed in a batch electrochemical reactor on synthetically prepared wastewater of the initial volume 0.2 L. The results indicate that increase of initial phosphate concentration has reduced removal rate, and by increasing the electrolysis duration removal efficiency increases. It was found that the aluminum electrode has higher removal efficiency (98.9%) compared to the iron electrode (93.5%) for 40 minutes of treatment (pH=3,  j=1mA/cm², γ₀=50 mg/L P–PO₄). The addition of supporting electrolyte (g_NaCl=0.25 g/L) is achieved removal efficiency of 50.2% for Fe and 52.1% fo Al electrode in only 10 minutes of treatment, respectively.