Preliminary investigation of electrocoagulation as a substitute for chemical coagulation

Recently electrocoagulation has been considered as one of the promising coagulation processes and was increasingly used as a substitute for chemical coagulation in many water treatment fields. However, there have not been many fundamental studies performed on it. In this research, a preliminary investigation was carried out to verify the effectiveness of the electrocoagulation compared with conventional chemical coagulation through a set of batch experiments. Turbidity removal efficiencies, using various aluminium dosages and at different water pH values, were investigated. In addition, the zeta potential was studied to develop understanding of particle characteristic after applying both electrocoagulation and chemical coagulation. It can be concluded from the results that electrocoagulation is more efficient than chemical coagulation in turbidity removal.