Cathodic dissolution in the electrocoagulation process using aluminium electrodes

All the authors working with aluminium electrodes in the electrocoagulation process have shown that a dissolution occurs at the cathode. This result cannot be explained by the electrochemical process in which only the anodes should be dissolved. The most probable reaction is a chemical attack by hydroxyl ions (generated during water reduction) on the aluminium cathode but nobody has proved it in the framework of the electrocoagulation process. So we are interested in determining what kind of reactions occurs at the cathode. For that, we have elaborated a batch pilot apparatus divided into two compartments, allowing measurement of gas formation taking place only in one compartment. The gases measurements were performed by mass spectrometry with helium as carrier gas. To validate our experimental protocol, the first experiments have been done with a stainless steel cathode: in this case, the results have indicated that the amount of created hydrogen is in good agreement with the values calculated using the second Faraday's law. The experiments realised with an aluminium cathode have shown that the hydrogen formation, in these conditions, was higher than those observed with the stainless steel cathode. All our investigations enable us to propose that with an aluminium cathode, hydrogen formation can be separated into two phenomena. The first one is due to an electrochemical reaction (water reduction), and the second one arises from a chemical reaction explaining the dissolution observed at the cathode.