Treatment of sugar industry effluent using an electrocoagulation process: Process optimization using the response surface methodology

Abstract

Wastewater of sugar industries has high pollutant load due to presence of organic and inorganic materials. Discharge of untreated or partially treated wastewater has negative effect on environment and on life of human, plants and animals. In our present studies, it is attempted to treat sugar industry effluent (SIE) by electrocoagulation process (ECP) using mild steel (MS) as electrode material. For this purpose, three process parameters namely pH (5-9), current density (j = 34.7-104.46 A m-2) and treatment time (tR = 20-100 min) were selected to optimize process using response surface methodology (RSM). The optimum conditions were pH 6.66, j = 105.16 A m-2 and tR = 100 min. The maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal of 75.98% was achieved from the optimum conditions. The predicted model by RSM showed R2 = 0.9515. After treatment of effluent, the sludge content in treated water was separated effectively by filtration and settling.

Applications of Computational and Statistical Models for Optimizing the Electrochemical Removal of Cephalexin Antibiotic from Water

“…The number of hidden layers and the number of neurons in these layers were determined by trial and error. Various nodes were used to define the optimum number of hidden nodes (i.e., [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The accuracy of the developed models was evaluated using statistical parameters, which are presented in Table 2.…”

“…The electrocoagulation technique is included several advantages such as relatively low sludge production, reduced risk of secondary contamination, flexibility and short treatment time, and with this method there is no need for chemicals. This process has been used to remove COD in various industries, such as paper and pulp effluents [16,17], the sugar industry [18], and car wash wastewater [19]. In addition, this involved some disadvantages, including the necessity to replace the sacrificial electrodes; and that the residual sludge contains large concentrations of iron and aluminum depending on the electrode material, and thus could potentially require an expensive treatment process because it could consume a lot of energy.…”