Treatment of Β-Naphthols from Waste Water by Electrocoagulation

The release of poly aromatic hydrocarbons specially β-Naphthols from industrial plants, especially in wastewater effluents discharged from desizing processes in the textile industry, causes many ecological problems that must be solved. These highly contaminated wastewaters contain considerable amounts of dissolved organic carbon, causing a high chemical oxygen demand. Various techniques have been investigated for the removal of these organic pollutants hydrocarbons from contaminated water, including biodegradation, adsorption onto activated carbon, membrane processes, and advanced oxidation processes. These techniques suffer from several technical and economic disadvantages. Although biodegradation is an environmentally friendly process, the rate of hydrocarbon biodegradation is considerably slow and thus requires long reaction times in the range. Electrocoagulation is an important water treatment technology that has been widely used for removing heavy metals and organic pollutants. In the present study, several factors were studied first of them is the EC process parameters such as current density ,pH, electrolysis time ,electrolyte concentration and initial compound concentration were investigated in terms of their effects on the removal efficiencies of poly aromatic hydrocarbons specially β-Naphthols. The optimum conditions for the removal of β-Naphthols were achieved at current density = 20mA/cm2, pH = 7, NaCl concentration = 1 g/l and temperature of 25°C.