Electrochemical treatment of Procion Black 5B using cylindrical flow reactor--a pilot plant study

The paper presents the results of an efficient electrochemical treatment of Procion Black 5B--a pilot plant study. Experiments were conducted at different current densities and selected electrolyte medium using Ti/RuO2 as anode, stainless-steel as cathode in a cylindrical flow reactor. By cyclic voltammetric analysis, the best condition for maximum redox reaction rate was found to be in NaCl medium. During the various stages of electrolysis, parameters such as COD, colour, FTIR, UV-vis spectra studies, energy consumption and mass transfer coefficient were computed and presented. The experimental results showed that the electrochemical oxidation process could effectively remove colour and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) from the synthetic dye effluent. The maximum COD reduction and colour removal efficiencies were 74.05% and 100%, respectively. Probable theory, reaction mechanism and modeling were proposed for the oxidation of dye effluent. The results obtained reveal the feasibilities of application of electrochemical treatment for the degradation of Procion Black 5B.