IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

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IC-RICE Conference Issue | Nov-2013, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 262
TREATMENT OF SUGAR INDUSTRY WASTEWATER USING
ELECTROCOAGULATION TECHNIQUE

C.B.Shivayogimath
1
, Rashmi Jahagirdar
2
1
Professor and Head,
2
M.Tech Scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot,
Karnataka, India, [email protected]

Abstract
The cost effective treatment of sugar industry wastewater is a challenging task. In the present work, an attempt was made for the
treatment of sugar industry wastewater using electrocoagulation technique with iron electrodes as sacrificial anode in bipolar
connection system. The effects of operating parameters such as pH, voltage and electrolysis duration on the removal of COD and
turbidity were investigated. The optimum value for each operating variable was experimentally determined. The optimum values of
voltage, initial pH and electrolysis time were found to be 12V, 6.0 and 4 hours respectively. The experiments revealed that COD and
turbidity in aqueous phase was effectively removed. The analysis of the treated water showed that the maximum COD and turbidity
removal efficiencies were 92.8% and 92.4% respectively at optimum conditions. The effluent was very clear and its quality meets the
discharge standard. Consequently, the electrocoagulation process can be considered as a reliable, safe and cost effective method for
the treatment of sugar industry wastewater.

Keywords: Electrocoagulation, sugar industry wastewater, electrolysis time, voltage, COD, turbidity.
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1. INTRODUCTION
India is one of the largest producers and consumers of 22
million tones of sugar per annum in the world and about
1000L of wastewater is produced for every ton of cane
crushed [1]. Because of high BOD content, sugar industry
wastewater lead to the depletion of dissolved oxygen content
in the water bodies resulting if discharged untreated, rendering
the water bodies unfit for both aquatic and human uses [2]. If
untreated wastewater is discharged on land, decaying organic
solids present in the wastewater clog the soil pores [3].

Rapid urbanization, industrialization and population growth
have led to the severe contamination of most of the fresh water
resources with untreated industrial and municipal wastes [4].
Treatment and reuse of wastewaters have become absolute
necessity to avoid pollution of fresh water bodies [5]. Hence
purification of sugar industry wastewater is a challenging task
due to the stringent discharge standards for the protection of
environment.

Sugar industry effluent is conventionally treated by adopting
various physico-chemical and biological methods. These
conventional processes suffer the disadvantage that the reagent
costs are high and the soluble COD removal is low. Moreover,
chemical treatments could induce a secondary pollution due to
the fact that chemical additives may contaminate the treated
water [6]. Coagulants in addition to increasing the amount of
sludge production increase the total solids in the effluents;
adsorption process necessitates back-washing and use of
membranes has the problem of scaling and frequent membrane
fouling [7]. Conventional biological treatment systems for
sugar factory wastewaters may not be feasible due to large
land space requirement as well as high capital and operational
cost [8]. Hence electrochemical treatment of sugar industry
wastewater may be considered as an economical alternative
process when conventional treatment methods fail to reduce
pollution. The EC technique has been successfully used for the
treatment of various wastewaters such as domestic wastewater
[9], cyanide containing wastewater [10], tannery wastewater
[11], textile wastewater [12], slaughter-house wastewater [13]
etc. Hence in the present study an attempt was made on the
evaluation of the efficiency of the electrocoagulation process
on treatment of sugar industry wastewater using iron
electrodes.

1.1 Theory of Electrocoagulation:
Electro coagulation (EC) is a process in which the anode
material undergoes oxidation with formation of various
monomeric and polymeric metal hydrolyzed species. These
metal hydroxides remove organics from wastewater by sweep
coagulation and/or by aggregating with the colloidal particles
present in the wastewater to form bigger size flocs which
ultimately are removed by settling [14]. During EC,
coagulants are obtained in situ by the dissolution of the anode.
In this process if M is considered as anode, the following
reactions will occur [15]:




IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

__________________________________________________________________________________________
IC-RICE Conference Issue | Nov-2013, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 263
At the anode:

M
(S)
M
n+
(aq)
+ ne
-
(1)

2H
2
O
(l)
4H
+
(aq)
+ O
2 (g)
+ 4e
-
(2)

At the cathode:

M
n+
(aq)
+ ne
-
M
(S)
(3)

2H
2
O
(l)
+ 2e
-
H
2 (g)
+2OH
-
(4)

Freshly formed amorphous M(OH)
3
has large surface areas
that are beneficial for rapid adsorption of soluble organic
compounds and trapping of colloidal particles.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
For the batch electrocoagulation, the reactor made up of
plastic material with the dimensions of 14cm x 9cm x 15cm
was used. The working volume of the reactor was 1L. The EC
unit consisted of four iron electrodes connected as bipolar
system in the reactor and DC power supply. The dimensions
of the electrodes were 5cm x 5cm x 1mm. The schematic
representation of the experimental setup is shown in Fig 1.
After the initial characterization of wastewater, batch
experimental studies were conducted to optimize the various
parameters such as pH, electrolysis time (ET) and voltage.
Experiments were performed with two electrodes connected to
the DC power supply to determine optimum conditions. In the
bipolar connection of electrodes, there is no electrical
connection between inner electrodes; only the outer electrodes
are connected to the power supply. The space between the four
electrodes was maintained 1cm in all the experiments. In each
run the voltage was varied to a desired value of 8, 10 and 12V.
To maintain homogenous mixing of the reactor content,
magnetic stirring unit is used. The wastewater concentration
was reduced to half the strength throughout the study to
reduce the time and current consumption and to obtain better
efficiency. The EC experiments were performed for 5 hours
and in each run samples were collected at every one hour
interval for necessary analysis.




Fig 1: Schematic representation of the Experimental Set-up

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Wastewater sample was collected from the nearest sugar
industry and was characterized for quality parameters. The
various parameters of wastewater are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Characteristics of Sugar industry Wastewater

Sl No. Parameters Values
1. pH 5.1
2. Color Greenish
Yellow
3. Turbidity 249.1 NTU
4. Suspended solids 380 mg/L
5. BOD
5
2250mg/L
6. COD 6400 mg/L
7. Total Dissolved
solids
1008 mg/L
8. Nitrate 6.2mg/L
9. Phosphate 0.8mg/L

The study was mainly focused on the electrocoagulation of the
sugar industry wastewater with high concentration of COD for
determining effects of operating parameters such as pH,
voltage and electrolysis time on COD and turbidity removal.
IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

__________________________________________________________________________________________
IC-RICE Conference Issue | Nov-2013, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 264
Initially, the experiment was carried out without adjusting pH
of raw wastewater at pH 5 with varying voltages. The COD
reduced from 6400mg/L to 2080, 1440 and 1120 mg/L thereby
giving 67.5%, 77.5% and 82.5% COD removal efficiencies
respectively for 8V, 10V and 12V at 4 hours (Fig 2).
However, the COD removal efficiencies remained same for 5
hours of electrolysis time. The turbidity reduced from 92 NTU
to 27, 21.5 and 15 NTU thereby being 70.67%, 76.82%,
83.49% efficient in removing turbidity from wastewater
respectively for 8V, 10V and 12V at 4 hours (Fig 3). The
turbidity removal efficiencies also did not change further for 5
hours of electrolysis duration.



Fig 2: COD removal vs time at different voltages at pH 5



Fig 3: Turbidity removal vs time at different voltages at pH 5

Next the experiment was carried out by increasing pH to 6.0
with different voltages 8V, 10V and 12V and maximum COD
removal efficiencies of 72.5%, 85% and 92.8% respectively
were obtained for 4 hours (Fig 4) which remained constant for
5 hours of electrolysis time. Similarly, maximum turbidity
removal efficiencies of 78.91%, 84.68% and 92.4% for 4
hours (Fig 5) were obtained.



Fig 4: COD removal vs time at different voltages at pH 6



Fig 5: Turbidity removal vs time at different voltages at pH 6

When experiment was carried out by further increasing the pH
to 7.0 with varying voltages 8V, 10V and 12V, the maximum
COD removal efficiencies were found to be 70%, 82.5% and
87.5% respectively for a duration of 4 hours (Fig 6) and
remained unchanged for 5 hours of electrolysis time.
Similarly, the maximum turbidity removal efficiencies
obtained were 72.4%, 80.09% and 88.76% for 4 hours of ET
(Fig 7).



Fig 6: COD removal vs time at different voltages at pH 7

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

__________________________________________________________________________________________
IC-RICE Conference Issue | Nov-2013, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 265


Fig 7: Turbidity removal vs time at different voltages at pH 7

From the above analysis, it was found that maximum COD
removal efficiency 92.8% and turbidity removal of 92.4%
were obtained at optimum operating parameters of pH 6, 12V
and 4 hours of electrolysis duration. At these operating
conditions COD reduced from 6400 mg/L to 460 mg/L and
turbidity reduced from 92 NTU to 7 NTU.

CONCLUSIONS
Based on the experimental findings, the electrolysis duration
of 4 hours, pH 6.0 and 12V were found to be the critical
operating parameters for the treatment of wastewater using
iron as electrode material. Maximum COD removal of 92.8%
and turbidity removal of 92.4% were obtained at these
optimum operating conditions. Hence, it can be concluded that
the electrocoagulation technology using iron electrodes
appears to be a feasible alternative for the treatment of sugar
industry wastewater. Thus electrocoagulation is an efficient
process for treatment of sugar industry wastewater which is
fast, easy, and economical and can be operated using less
equipment and limited space.

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