Mineralization of Synthetic and Industrial Food Effluent Containing Acid Red18 by Electro-Fenton Process using a Graphite-Felt Cathode

The oxidation of Acid Red18, in aqueous solutions by electro-Fenton method was optimized. The reactor is an undivided glass electrochemical cell with a graphite-felt cathode and a platinum anode. The value of 250 mA as applied current and Fe2+ as a catalyst with a concentration of 0.5 mM are found to be the optimum operating parameters for the efficient mineralization of 6.6X10-2mM of AR18. The evolution of its concentrations with processing time shows a pseudo first order kinetics. The relevance of the process was then confirmed on a Tunisian industrial food effluent. Progress of decolorization through treatment time was monitored, it achieves 100 % decolorization for the AR18 synthetic solution and 98 % for the industrial effluent. Mineralization of the dye solutions were examined by the estimation of the chemical oxygen demand removal, which achieves 73 % for the synthetic AR18 solution and 50 % for the industrial effluent after 4h of treatment. The energy consumption per unit COD mass (ECCOD) of the EFP is determined for the treatment of AR18 synthetic solution and for the real industrial effluent.