Abstract
Electrochemical treatment methods are frequently used to remove a wide range of pollutants from wastewaters generated by domestic and industrial operations. This work aims to investigate the impacts of using monopolar and bipolar connection modes of an electrocoagulation reactor (ECR) used to remove multi-toxic metals from synthetic wastewater. The present design of the ECR involves concentric-multi-cubic (CMC) aluminum electrodes with an activated area of 360 cm2. The anode electrodes are perforated to be light-weight and decrease the amount of anode consumption as well as the increase of oxygen bubbles released that were assisting the buoyancy process of light-pollutants toward the surface of the solution in addition to the hydrogen bubbles are released from the plane electrodes of the cathode. The synthetic wastewater contains 100 ppm of each Pb, Cd, and Cu ion under the effects of pH of 7, applied current of 1.4 A (which equals remove to 3.88 mA/cm2), NaCl of 2 g, 300 rpm of stirring speed, and reaction time of (0-90 min). The core results proved that the bipolar connection mode (BCM) was more effective than the monopolar connection mode (MCM) in toxic metal-wastewater treatment. After 60 min of the reaction time, the highest removal efficiencies of these metals After a reaction timeof 60 min, the highest removal efficiencies of Pb, Cd, and Cu metals obtained via the BCM system were : 99.91%, 99.68%, and 99.14%, respectively 99.91%, 99.68%, and 99.14%, respectively. While they achieved 60.55%, 64.24%, and 89.55% via the MCM system , . re spectively The present new design of electrodes using the bipolar system was more reliable in wastewater treatment containing toxic metals with significantly low values of electrical energy consumption, electrode consumption, and cost-effectiveness
