Reduction of Pollutants in Petrochemicals Wastewaters by Electro Oxidation Technique

Abstract

With rapidly growing world population an increasing levels of pollution, the protection of the environment and the preservation of resources have become a major issue for future technological progress. Due to the fact water is limited and vital resource, it should not end as inevitable waste after having been used. Therefore one of the main R&D tasks in the future is the provision of high quality water and at an affordable price. In this context, electrochemical processes used for the recovery or treatment of wastewater from industrial plants play an important role. Recently electrochemical oxidation processes have been extensively applied to treat various wastewaters. Electrochemical oxidation is a promising, versatile alternative that has the potential to replace or compete with the already existing processes. It is amenable to automation and compatible with the environment because the main reagent, the “electron” is a clean one. So, laboratory experiments were carried out with real plant effluents at IPCL, Baroda Complex. Mainly the aim of the electro oxidation study was to study the effects of various parameters like Hydrogen Peroxide addition effect, NaCl addition effect, Stirring effect, Ultrasound effect etc with the combination of the electro oxidation treatment. iv For the anode Titanium substrate was chosen and electrode coating was done on the Titanium substrate. In laboratory preparation two anodes were coated, one with the coating of Tin Dioxide and the other with the cobalt oxide. These anodes were used for the electrode selection for the particular stream treatment. Stainless Steel was chosen as the cathode for the electrode pair. Three different real streams were taken from the plant to check the electro oxidation efficiency in the reduction of Cyanide. All these streams contain higher amount of Cyanide, which are not biologically treated without giving costly prior treatments. Here the attempt was made to check the laboratory made coated anodes Titanium coated with Tin Dioxide and Titanium coated with Cobalt oxide performance in the wastewaters treatment of the IPCL, Baroda complex. The main aim was to check the reduction efficiency of the cyanide from the wastewater stream with the batch scale and Continuous flow cell experiments. So that the current process can be replace by this one.