Study of Fe, Ca, and Mg removal using electrocoagulation method from wastewater integrated canal

The study of Fe, Ca, and Mg removal from wastewater using the electrocoagulation method in the Center for Accelerator Research and Technology (CART) has been carried out. Electrocoagulation is one of the effective wastewater treatment methods, especially for metal removal. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the electrocoagulation method in CART wastewater treatment, especially Fe, Ca, and Mg removal, before being released into the environment. The electrocoagulation reactor operates continuously using aluminium electrodes. Several parameters were used to obtain the optimal condition for Fe, Ca, and Mg removal: operational time, flow rate, and electrode distance. The result showed that the optimum condition is on the operational flow rate 1 mL/s, the processing time 2 minutes, and the distance between electrodes is 1 cm. The optimum efficiency for Mg, Fe, and Ca removal was 96.0%, 95.2%, and 79.15%, respectively; meanwhile, Total Suspended Solid (TSS) decreased by 87.5%. In addition, the kinetic model in this study was carried out by determining the reaction rate constant (k) as a function of time for three variations of flow rate. The k value for Ca and Fe removal followed the second-order kinetic model, while the Mg removal fitted the first-order kinetic model.