Electro coagulation for removal of chemical oxygen demand in sanitary landfill leachate

This paper presents the results of research in removal of COD from landfill leachate by electrocoagulation (EC) process using aluminum as a sacrificial electrode which is currently used for the purification of many types of water and wastewater. The effecting parameters such as applied voltage, conductivity and initial pH were studied to achieve higher removal. The performance of EC process was carried out in batch reactor. In this process, samples of 25mL were taken out from the batch at 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 minutes of contact time. Results obtained show that the most effective removal efficiency could be achieved at 10V of applied voltage. In addition, the increase of wastewater conductivity, in the range of 28.0031.00 mS/cm, reduced the EC performance on COD removal. Moreover, the experimental results also show that the COD removal was strongly influenced by the initial pH. EC was found to be very efficient when the range of initial pH is between 4 and 8. The highest COD removal efficiency of 74.08% occurred at a voltage of 10 V, conductivity of 28.00mS/cm, initial pH of 4 and contact time of 100 min. In this study, the EC process was proved effective and was capable in degrading COD from landfill leachate.