Simultaneous decolorization of binary mixture of Reactive Yellow and Acid Violet from wastewaters by electrocoagulation

Abstract

Dyes are common pollutants in a large variety of industrial wastewaters, and the treatment of these wastes has been extensively studied by coagulation. For the removal of pollutants from the wastewaters, different techniques have been used and electrocougulation is one of the widely used methods. This process is very effective in removing organic pollutants including dyestuff wastewater. The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of the operating parameters, such as current density, electrolyte concentration, dyestuff concentration, and pH of solution on decolorization and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal of wastewater containing two different dyes in same solution by direct current electrocoagulation. The amount of dye removed was found by application of first derivative spectrophotometric method to the synthetic dye mixtures. In this work synthetic dye mixture which include C.I. Reactive Yellow 145 (RY145) and C.I. Acid Violet 90 (AV 90) were used for electrocougulation (EC) process with iron electrodes. In the presence of both dye molecules, the optimum pH was found to be 4, optimum NaCl concentration was 3000 mg/L and optimum current density was 5.56 mA/cm(2). Under these conditions in the case of 100 mg/L-1 each dye concentration at 20 degrees C and 3 cm interelectro distance the color removal efficiency was reached 97.7% for AV 90 and 97.1% for RY145 in 10 minutes time duration. Dye concentration dependent highest COD removal efficiency was measured as 82% around at 100 mg/L dye concentration.