Treatment of dairy effluents by electrocoagulation using aluminium electrodes

This work sets out to examine the efficiency of an electrolytic treatment: electrocoagulation, applied to dairy effluents. The experiments were carried out using a soluble aluminium anode on artificial wastewater derived from solutions of milk powder. The flocks generated during this treatment were separated by filtration. The analysis of the filtrates showed that the chemical oxygen demand (COD) was reduced by up to 61% while the removal of phosphorus, nitrogen contents, and turbidity were 89, 81 and 100%, respectively. An analogous treatment applied to phosphate and lactose solutions revealed that lactose was not eliminated, a fact that could account for the rather poor lowering of the COD. Compared to the chemical coagulation treatment with aluminium sulphate, the efficiency of the electrocoagulation technique was almost identical. However the wastewaters treated by electrocoagulation differed by the fact that they exhibited a lower conductivity and a neutral pH value (by contrast to the acid nature of the solution treated by the chemical coagulation). This result (low conductivity, neutral pH) tends to show that it may be possible to recycle the treated water for some industrial uses. Moreover, the electrocoagulation process uses fewer reagents: the mass of the aluminium anode dissolved during the treatment is lower compared to the quantity of the aluminium salt used in chemical coagulation. These two observations clearly show that the electrocoagulation technique is more performing. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.