Application of Electrocoagulation Process for Dairy Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Dairy industry wastewater is characterized by high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and other pollution load. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the operating parameters such as applied voltage, number of electrodes, and reaction time on a real dairy wastewater in the electrocoagulation process. For this purpose, aluminum electrodes were used in the presence of potassium chloride as electrolytes. It has been shown that the removal efficiency of COD, BOD5, and TSS increased with increasing the applied voltage and the reaction time. The results indicate that electrocoagulation is efficient and able to achieve 98.84% COD removal, 97.95% BOD5 removal, 97.75% TSS removal, and >99.9% bacterial indicators at 60 V during 60 min. The experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of electrocoagulation techniques for the treatment of dairy wastewaters. Finally, the results demonstrated the technical feasibility of electrocoagulation process using aluminum electrodes as a reliable technique for removal of pollutants from dairy wastewaters.