Suitability of electro-chemical reactor with copper electrode for sugar industry wastewater treatment: optimization of parameters, mechanism, kinetics and sludge analysis

Abstract

Abstract The waste water generated from sugar industry contains a high degree of organic pollutant. Treating the sugar industry wastewater is thus crucial important for the environmental concern. The treated water can be reprocessed in different unit operation due to lack of fresh water. The purpose of this research work is to treat the sugarcane processing industry wastewater by electrochemical technology. The experiment was carried out with the copper electrode in batch mode. The input process parameters were optimized by using response surface methodology. At optimum condition at pH 6.79, current 4.97, electrode distance 1.41 and treatment ∼30 min, maximum 87.07% of chemical oxygen demand and 99.18% color removals was attained. A fairly high predicted value of regression coefficient for chemical oxygen demand (Pre-R 2) 0.81 and color (Pre-R 2) 0.851 and adjacent value for chemical oxygen demand (Adj-R 2) 0.46 and color (Adj-R 2) 0.589 was obtained between the experimental values and the calculate values by using a second-order regression model. The physicochemical characterizations of scum reveal less percentage of inorganic and it cane used as a micronutrient.