Wastewater Treatment of Textile Industry by Electrocoagulation Process

The large volume of consumed water and pigments in the textile industry subsequently produces hazardous wastewater, which potentially may cause serious environmental problems. On the other hand, due to water stress in Iran, the need for further treatment of this wastewater is more urgent. In recent years, electrochemical processes have been considered as an efficient process. The lack of information to build large-scale electrical coagulation units has led to the deficiency of extensive application of this method in industrial units. In this paper, the removal of color and COD in the wastewater of a textile factory in Tehran has been studied in order to determine the efficiency of the electrocoagulation process and to find optimal operation parameters. Optimum distance between the electrodes (4 cm), optimum electrical potential (40 V) and electrolyte concentration (4 mgNaCl/L) are the main achievement of this research. The treatment efficiency achieved in this research is 69% for COD and 96% for color removal.