Treatment of a Distillery Wastewater in a Bipolar-Mode Electrocoagulation System: Performance Evaluation and Kinetic Analysis

This work investigates the performance of a bipolar mode electro coagulation system with multiple electrodes. The objective is to remove recalcitrant total organic carbon (TOC) and total phosphorus (TP) from distillery wastewater. The design surface area to volume (S/V) ratio considered for the study was 76.5/m. The effects of the process variables, such as initial pH, retention time and current density, were evaluated on the performance of the reactor. The percentage removal of pollutants increased with an increase in current density and time. The treatment efficiency was found to be at near neutral pH. The results of the experiment revealed that the efficiencies of removing the pollutants were found to be 73% and 85% for TOC and TP, respectively. The reactions followed first-order kinetics for both TOC and TP removal from distillery wastewater. The mass transfer coefficient, K values were found to be higher at near neutral pH. The correlation between the current density and mass transfer coefficients for both the pollutants was deduced and the energy consumption was found to be 12 kWh/cu m.