Electrochemical degradation of specialty

Conventional wastewater treatment techniques are inefficient to manage large quantities of refractory organics discharged by specialty chemical industries. The present investigation aimed to compare the overall performance of different electrochemical reactor configurations, specifically batch, batch recirculation, and continuous recycle reactors, in removing organic pollutants from wastewater generated by a medium-scale specialty chemical industry. Key factors including current density, supporting electrolyte concentration, electrolysis duration, and fluid flow rate were critically evaluated for their effects on pollutant removal efficiency and energy consumption. Results indicated that the continuous recycle reactor configuration outperformed others due to its operational flexibility. The study also highlighted the importance of circulation and withdrawal flow rates in controlling treatment duration and transfer coefficients. Additionally, the potential of artificial neural networks (ANN) was explored to predict the performance of batch electrochemical treatment, demonstrating the capability to estimate the extent of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal based on input factors such as current density, time, and supporting electrolyte concentration. Such predictive modeling is invaluable for the design and scaling of treatment processes, suggesting that integrating electrochemical degradation with conventional biological methods may be a more economically viable approach for effluent management.