Potential use of clay in electrocoagulation process of textile wastewater: Treatment performance and flocs characterization

The present work deals with pretreatment of synthetic effluents in a batch stirred electrocoagulation cell with aluminum electrode coupled with adsorption using clay particles. Several working parameters such as pH, current density, clay dosage and operating time were studied in an attempt to achieve higher removal efficiency. The toxicity was also monitored by the Daphnia magna inhibition test. Results obtained with synthetic wastewater revealed that most effective color and COD removal capacities could be achieved without changing the pH. In addition, increasing current density in a range of 8–140 A/cm2 and operating time from 2 to 15 min enhanced the treatment efficiency. The addition of clay as adsorbent resulted in remarkable increase in the removal rate of color and COD at lower current densities and operating time, than the conventional electrocoagulation process. The method was found to be highly efficient and relatively fast compared to existing conventional techniques.