Fluoride removal from industrial wastewater using electrocoagulation and its adsorption kinetics

Electrocoagulation (EC) process using aluminum electrodes is proposed for removing fluoride from treated industrial wastewater originated from steel industry. Effects of different operating conditions such as temperature, pH, voltage, hydraulic retention time (HRT) and number of aluminum plates between anode and cathode plates on removal efficiency are investigated. Experimental results showed that by increasing HRT, removal efficiency increases but after 5 min changes are negligible. Therefore, the total HRT required is only 5 min. The more HRT, the more electrical current is needed in order to achieve to constant voltage and temperature in system. In addition, it is found that pH value decreases from 6.91 to 4.6 during first 10 min but it increases up to 9.5 during 50 min. After treatment, the fluoride concentration was reduced from initial 4.0-6.0 mg/L to lower than 0.5 mg/L. The pH of the influent is found as a very important variable which affects fluoride removal significantly. The optimal range for the influent is 6.0-7.0 at which not only effective defluoridation can be achieved, but also no pH readjustment is needed after treatment. Moreover, increasing number of aluminum plates between anode and cathode plates in bipolar system does not significantly affect fluoride removal. Finally, the kinetic analysis is done for the system which indicates that the adsorption system obeys the second-order kinetic model.