Performance of Electrocoagulation Technique for the treatment of Dairy Wastewater in a Batch Process

The treatment of dairy industry effluent was researched in an electrocoagulation reactor run at batch mode with Stainless Steel (SS 304) and Aluminium electrodes showing eventual and gradual deterioration. The impact of operating parameters such as change in the material of electrode, distance between the electrodes, electrolysis time, variation in the input of voltage, speed of rotation of the stirrer etc on the percentage removal of chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand was evaluated. The optimum results of the experimentations were obtained with speed of rotation at 150 rpm, keeping the distance between the Stainless Steel (SS 304) electrodes as 2 x 10-2 meter, maintaining the pH of 7-8 and performing the experimentation for 4 hours. The average of all the similar sets of experimental conditions with these optimum parameters resulted in the best percentage removal for the chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen which was investigated to be 92 % and 86 % respectively. Since the electrolysis time of 4 hours was employed for the process to get completed, the consumption of electricity was observed to be in the range of 16 - 64 KWh/m3. Therefore, depending on the observations and results obtained in the analysis, the best fit suitable data is presented in this paper as a behavior of parameters with respected to operating conditions.