EFFECTIVENESS OF ELECTRO-COAGULATION TREATMENT METHOD ON THE PHYSIO-CHEMICAL PARAMETERS AND HEAVY METALS IN RUBBER LATEX WASTEWATER

E. O. Fakorede; J. R. Adewumi

E. O. Fakorede Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Elizade University P.M.B. 002, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State,
J. R. Adewumi Department of Civil Engineering, Federal University of Technology, P.M.B. 704, Akure, Nigeria

Keywords: Aluminium, Carbon, Electrocoagulation, Rubber Latex Wastewater

Abstract

Electrocoagulation has been employed as a treatment technique for treating various wastewaters. This study focuses on the performance of the electrocoagulation process for the treatment of rubber latex wastewater (RW) using Aluminum-Aluminum (AL-AL) and Aluminum-Carbon (AL-C) electrodes. Rubber latex wastewater (RW) was obtained locally from the plastic industry in Araromi-Obu, Ondo State of Nigeria with an initial concentration of 7.30, 28°C, 65.53mg/L and 785.23mg/L for pH, Temperature, BOD, and COD respectively and subjected to electrocoagulation using (AL-AL) and (AL-C) electrodes. Effects of electrocoagulation time and electrode types were studied and achieved under the following initial conditions of 30V, current density of 15mA, inter-distance electrodes of 1.5cm. The results revealed that this process could reduce the concentration of BOD, COD and Lead in RW. The highest removal efficiencies of 98.74% and 98.47% (COD); 82.02% and 79.12 (BOD); 90% and 83.33% (Lead), were obtained for AL-AL and AL-C electrodes respectively. From this study, it can be concluded that electrocoagulation is effective in the treatment of RW. It is recommended that Rubber producing industries could adopt this treatment method to treat their wastewater rather than disposal into the environment without treatment.