Modeling the Removal of Indigo Dye from Aqueous Media in a Sonoelectrochemical Flow Reactor

摘要

Several processes in the textile industry require large amounts of water that inevitably arecontaminated. Major pollutants are dyes, such as the indigo blue used in the denim textile industry.Therefore, specific wastewater treatment is used to eliminate dyes before being discharged into thesewage collection system. Conventional treatments have several main drawbacks such as, largeconsumption of reagents, generation of large quantities of sludge, prolonged treatment times, and lowremoval efficiency. In this research work, electrochemical and sonoelectrochemical treatments wereevaluated as alternative methods to remove dyestuff from textile industry wastewater. Theelectrochemical treatment consists of passing a continuous current through the wastewater by usingmetallic electrodes, and for the sonoelectrochemical treatment, an ultrasonic irradiation is added withinthe reactor. Carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum electrodes were used to evaluate theirefficiency. When the sonoelectrochemical process was applied using carbon steel electrodes, it waspossible to remove up to 90% of the indigo dye. The main dye removing processes wereelectroflotation and electrocoagulation. The electrochemical and sonoelectrochemical processes wereimplemented using flow reactors. The hydrodynamics of the tubular flow reactor were modeled in non- steady state.