Decolourisation of Disperse Brown Dye Solution by Electrocoagulation Process with Al and Fe Electrodes

Abstract

Dyes used in the textile industry can easily contaminate water and are becoming a world-wide pollution problem. The efficiency of colour removal process from artificially prepared and actual textile wastewater using electrocoagulation (EC) was investigated in this study. A disperse dye was selected for the synthetic dye wastewater experiments. Different operating conditions such as dye concentration, pH, conductivity values and current density (CD) were investigated using synthetically prepared dye solution in a batch EC reactor with parallel-connected electrodes. EC optimum working conditions for decolourisation rate of 50 mg/L synthetic dye solution were found as current density of 30-37.5 mA/cm(2), conductivity value of 1 mS/cm, pH value of 7.5 at 25 degrees C for both Al and Fe electrodes in this experimental work. Additionally, a real textile wastewater was tested at similar experimental conditions achieved with synthetic dye solution using a batch EC reactor. Dye removal rate was achieved as %80 with real wastewater with energy consumption of 9.16 kWh/m(3).