Abstract
The treatment of effluent from anaerobic digestion of organic wastes was carried out using chemical and electrochemical processes, namely, chemical coagulation (CC) with lime, electrocoagulation (EC) with iron consumable electrodes, and electrochemical oxidation (EO) with a boron-doped diamond anode, at different experimental conditions. In the CC assays, the highest chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, 50%, was achieved for a lime concentration of 70 g L−1 after 2 h experiment. Under the experimental conditions studied, EC promoted COD removals of 80% after 5 h and EO led to COD removals of 43% after 6 h electrolysis, being this last removal increased to 60% when chloride was added to the effluent. A combined EC+EO treatment was also performed, utilizing the most favorable experimental conditions obtained in the individual processes, and global removals of 95% in COD and 44% in ammonia nitrogen were attained after 5 h of EC followed by 6 h of EO. These results proved that the combined process can be an efficient alternative in the treatment of effluents from anaerobic digestion of organic wastes with the characteristics of the studied effluent.
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Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT, for the funding of the FibEnTech-UBI Research Unit, project UID/Multi/00195/2013, and for the grant awarded to A. Fernandes, SFRH/BPD/103615/2014, and from BID/ICI-UID FC/Santander Totta Universidades—UBI/2016, for the grant awarded to R. Silva.
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Fernandes, A., Jesus, T., Silva, R. et al. Effluents from Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Wastes: Treatment by Chemical and Electrochemical Processes. Water Air Soil Pollut 228, 441 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-017-3620-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-017-3620-1