A bench-scale electrochemical peroxidation reactor performance on removal of organic pollutants from tannery industrial wastewater

The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of a novel laboratory scale electrochemical peroxidation (ECP) reactor using iron (Fe) electrodes (anode and cathode) for treatment of tannery wastewater. In order to minimize operating cost, the effects of operating parameters were determined, and response surface methodology was used to optimize the operating parameters. The operating parameters were initial pH 2.2-8.4, H2O2 dosage 0-0.02 g/L, Fe2+ dosage 0-0.005 g/L and current den-sity 10-40 mA/cm2. Under the optimum conditions, the ECP process revealed better performance in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal with an average value of 85% in contrast to 65% removal in electro-Fenton (EF) process. Analysis and comparison of the data revealed that ECP process delivered a better treatment performance than EF process, taking into account that the optimum elec-trolysis time and applied current density were considerably. Overall, these results confirmed that the novel ECP reactor using Fe electrodes can reduce the operating cost and be proposed as a pragmatic approach to remove maximum amount of colour, COD, and chromium(III) from tannery wastewater.