ELECTROCHEMICAL TREATMENT OF ACID RED1 DYE FROM THE SOLUTION USING ALUMINIUM AND STAINLESS STEEL ELECTRODES

Abstract

The treatment of waste water from industries before discharge to fresh stream of water is of environmental concern. Wastewater from dying and finishing processes in textile industry are characterized by intense color and highly fluctuating pH. Many dyes are toxic and are generally, stable to light, oxidizing agent and heat, and their presence in wastewater offers considerable resistance to their biodegradation and thus upsetting aquatic life. There are many processes to remove dyes from colored effluents such as adsorption, precipitation, chemical degradation, photo degradation, biodegradation, chemical coagulation and electro chemical. Electrochemical was found to be an empirical water treatment technology that has ability to treat variety of contaminants including dyes, metals, suspended solids, oils and organics present in the industrial wastewater. The technique combines all the primary and secondary treatment together producing lower quantity of sludge than other methods allowing for low disposal cost. Electrochemical process provides a simple, reliable and cost-effective method for the treatment of wastewater without any need for additional chemicals, and thus the secondary pollution. It also reduces the amount of sludge, which needs to be disposed. The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of aluminum and stainless steel electrodes for the removal of Acid Red 1 dye from aqueous solution. Azo dyes are considered to be toxic in nature and are generally carcigeric and their removal has been made mandatory by many international organizations. Acid Red 1 is one of the azo dye which is also very toxic. No information is available of this treatment of this dye in open literature. AR1 dye is commonly used in textile industry as well as food industry. The experiment has been carried out to study the effect of pH, inter electrode distance, applied current, initial concentration and number of electrodes on the removal of AR1 dye from aqueous solution by batch process. The dye removal efficiency was higher when the pH was 6.7 that are in acidic. Results indicated that the treatment efficiency was enhanced appreciably by increasing the applied current. Maximum color removal of AR1 dye, i.e 98% and 99% was observed with Al and SS electrodes respectively at optimum parameters like initial pH, initial concentration, applied current, voltage supply, inter-electrode distance, no. of electrodes and NaCl concentration.