ELECTROCHEMICAL TREATMENT OF DAIRY INDUSTRY WASTEWATER

Abstract

Industrial dairy effluents are characterized by high biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations and contain fats, nutrients, lactose, as well as detergents and sanitizing agents. Due to the high pollution load of dairy wastewater, the milk-processing industries discharging untreated/partially treated wastewater can cause serious environmental problems. In the present study, treatment of simulated dairy waste water (SDW) by electrocoagulation process has been investigated using aluminum electrode. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory scale batch reactor. Chemical oxygen demand (COD), and specific energy consumption (SEC) was evaluated based on the parameters namely, pH (6–9), electrolyte concentration (0.25-1 mg/L), current (0.5–2.5 A) and time (0-120 min). Optimization was targeted for maximum COD removal and minimum operating cost. The optimized conditions suggested were applied current - 2.5 A, pH-9, and electrolyte concentration (1 mg/L) and time of 120 min. Optimum COD removal efficiencies were 70.30 %. Further, kinetic analysis has been studied at optimum operating conditions and found that degradation favors second order kinetic model