Supatorn Kobjaroenkun. Removal of lead by electrocoagulation using iron as an electrode. Master's Degree(Engineering Technology). Thammasat University. Thammasat University Library. : Thammasat University, 2022.
Removal of lead by electrocoagulation using iron as an electrode
Abstract:
The toxicity of heavy metals has been noticed for a long-time including lead. Lead (Pb) is used in various applications including industrial, agricultural, and domestic applications. This study employed an electrocoagulation process to remove lead in synthetic water. For the first part, the Plackett-Burman design was used to design experiments to find the significant factors for Pb removal efficiency. The experiments were operated by varying 7 variables (electric current, pH value, the distance between each electrode, electrolyte concentration, Pb concentration, time, and stirring speed) and split them into two levels (high and low). Experiments were conducted in batch mode. Iron (Fe) was used as electrodes and the average dimension was 50 x 100 x 1.5 mm. The used electrodes were collected, and the weight was measured before and after the experiment. The removal efficiencies were analyzed by Inductively coupled plasma or ICP and Scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX) was used to analyze flocs and electrodes. Results of the first part showed that the electrocoagulation process can be used to remove lead from synthetic water and the highest efficiency is 89.7% from run order 10 while the lowest efficiency is 35.55% from run order 12. Furthermore, the most important factor identified affecting the removal efficiency is the applied current. Pb concentration and time were found to be the secondary important factors affecting the removal. However, the wide range of removal efficiency indicated that this process needs to do optimized to identify the best condition to remove lead. For the second part, traditional optimization was used in this process and the procedure of the experiments was the same as the first part. There were three variables which were the applied current, Pb concentration, and time of operation studying in the optimization, and the rest factors were fixed according to the result from the first part. The result showed that the highest efficiency of the optimized process could reach 99.96% and the optimal condition was set as the current at 1.5 A, Pb concentration at 200 ppm, and time at 1 hour. Also, the analysis of flocs showed that they did form not smoothly and the amount of lead contained in the flocs ensured that lead was absorbed and removed by using the electrocoagulation method
Thammasat University. Thammasat University Library