Development of an Advanced Electrochemical System for Wastewater Treatment

Damaraju, Madhuri and Bhattacharyya, Debraj (2019) Development of an Advanced Electrochemical System for Wastewater Treatment. PhD thesis, Indian institute of technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

Wastewaters, like those originating from agro-based industries are generated in large volumes and are high in organic and nutrient content. Agro-based industries usually adopt biological treatment processes for the effluent treatment. However, these wastewaters need downstream processes for the removal of residual organics and nutrients after the biological treatment prior to discharge or reuse. In this thesis, three agro-based wastewaters -. Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME), Distillery Wastewater (DWW), and effluent from a Marigold processing plant (MWW) have been identified as high-strength wastewaters and, therefore are selected for research. All the wastewaters contain high-molecular weight complex organic compounds which are difficult to remove in the biological treatment processes. These components increase the organic strength of wastewater and are also capable of imparting Color to wastewater, thereby, reducing the prospect of efficient wastewater reuse. After the biological treatment, these wastewaters are usually sent to multiple effect evaporators for complete drying or to membrane systems for further treatment in order to reach the discharge criteria. However, evaporator technology is costly, energy intensive, and is not an environmental friendly technique. Though membrane systems are capable of producing high quality effluents of reusable quality, the presence of residual organics frequently causes fouling membranes. Therefore, there is a need for a technology that can remove the residual organics from biologically treated wastewaters and that can bridge the gap between the membrane systems and the biological treatment systems. In this research, we assessed the suitability of the electrocoagulation process as a technology for this purpose. Electrochemical methods are gaining importance in wastewater treatment due to their ease of operation, lower cost of treatment, and high treatment efficiencies. This study focusses on development of a continuous bipolar mode electrochemical system (CBME) for polishing agro-industry wastewaters.

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