Acid mine wastewater treatment using electrocoagulation method

The research uses the electrocoagulation method as an alternative to treat acid mine wastewater. The electrocoagulation process occurs when the anode releases Al ions as an active coagulant into the solution to form floc, which binds contaminants and particles in acid mine wastewater. This could remove 99.95% of Fe in the case of wastewater from the iron ore beneficiation plant. However, until now, there are not many Al-Al electrodes used for the case of iron ore mine acid drainage. Therefore, this research aims to understand the effect of metal ion concentrations of Fe. In addition, through this study, the influence of pH and Total Suspended Solid (TSS) during electrocoagulation of the acid mine wastewater was also investigated. Those three variables were analyzed for the voltages and electrolyte concentration. From the study, it was found that the removal of Fe increased with the increase of the voltages. The optimum reduction of the Fe concentration could be achieved at the electrolyte concentration of 0.01 M. The electrocoagulation also neutralized the pH of the wastewater from 2.83 and reduced the TSS content from 131.04 to 9.5 mg/L. It is expected from this study that more research related to the use of electrocoagulation to treat acid mine wastewater can be conducted in the future, particularly with different variations of electrodes, electrolytes, and heavy metals to be removed.