Background: Highly-concentrated phosphate and nitrate anions from sugarcane wastewater are often discharged into public waters without standardized treatments. This study assessed the effects of electrical coagulation, initial pH and reaction time in the removal of phosphate and nitrate pollutants. Methods: We used aluminum electrodes to remove the pollutants at Hakhim Farabi Agricultural and Industrial complex, Khuzestan Province, Iran. A septic tank was used for collecting water samples followed by measuring the pH, and the concentrations of phosphate and nitrate in the samples. The pH was set at 5, 7, 9 or 11. Six aluminum electrodes were placed perpendicular to the water flow and were connected to power in a single-polar method. They were used to assess the effects of pH changes, electrical power at 10 and 30 volts and the water retention time at 15, 30, 45 or 60 min. on the efficiency of the pollutants’ removal. Results: The results indicated that under equal retention time and varying pH values, as voltage increased from 10 to 30, the phosphate and nitrate removal increased progressively. It was further demonstrated that the maximum phosphate removal efficiency was achieved at pH7, while it declined at higher pH levels. The highest possible nitrate removal efficiency was achieved under alkaline pH levels. The overall results showed that at every pH and voltage, the percentage of phosphate and nitrate removal increased over time. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that electro-coagulation process is an appropriate and efficient method to remove phosphate and nitrate pollutants from sugarcane wastewaters.
The paper introduces heat exchanger tanks, detailing their dominant thermodynamic relations to obtain the exergy analysis relations of heat exchanger tanks. Heat exchanger tank is examined under various laboratory conditions, including the power of heat element inside the tank, mass flow rate of cooling water of tank wall and the mixer speed inside the tank which were all variable. The needed data relating to the water temperature inside the tank as output water after cooling the tank wall based on these conditions. The exergy loss (irreversibility) and efficiency diagrams were then drawn and the optimization parameters of performance and their range were evaluated using exergy analysis. This was meant to increase the efficiency and decrease the energy consumption. The results indicate that under thr circumstances of controlling mass flow rate of input cold water and power of heat element as well as the mixer speed, respectively, in their possible minimum and maximum measures, the system performs in optimal conditions according to exergy analysis.
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