Treatment of Distillery Waste Water using Electro coagulation

Authors

Nair J. Sindhu
Professor – Department of Civil Engineering, Bhilai Institute of Technology, Durg Chhattisgarh, India.

Abstract

Distilleries are one of the most polluting industries generating large volumes of high strength wastewater. These effluents are containing highly colored, COD, BOD, TDS and other organic matter. To meet the environmental standards and regulations, treatment of effluent is must before letting out to the environment. EC treatment has attracted great attention in treating industrial waste water because of versatility and environmental compatibility. A laboratory treatment apparatus was made for the purpose of finding the suitability of electrochemical treatment for the treatment of distillery waste water. Three different electrode material viz. steel, aluminium and iron was utilized to study the relative efficiencies of the electrode materials in removing the impurities present in the distillery wastewater, The distillery wastewater samples were electromagnetically treated for 2 hours each with the three different electrode materials under varying voltages of 20V, 35V, 50V, 65V and 80V, since 80V is the maximum capacity of the testing equipment. Iron electrode showed much better results and therefore has higher average performance efficiency. Iron is also cheaper and more easily available than aluminum. Thus it can be concluded that Iron can be suggested as the most desired, amongst the three electrodes for the electro coagulation treatment of Distillery wastewater.