Effect of Operating Conditions on the Treatment of Cr (VI) Containing Wastewater by Electrocoagulation with Aluminum and Stainless Steel Electrodes

Abstract

This work is aimed to evaluate the influence of operating conditions on the removal of Cr (VI) from wastewater by the application of electrocoagulation. For this, a bench-scale electrocoagulation reactor provided with aluminum stainless steel electrodes was built and used in the treatment of chromium-containing synthetic wastewater in a range of 10–50 mg/L. According to our results, the use of stainless steel electrodes placed with a gap separation of 1.0–2.0 cm, initial pH of 8.5, and 30 V electric potential led to the best results. Additionally, by a simplified operating costs estimation it was found that from 7.04 to 8.13 USD/m3 are required to reach complete removal of Cr (VI).