Rameshbabu, B. and Venkatesan, P. and Kanimozhi, R. and Basha, C.A. (2009) Removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater by electrochemical oxidation using cylindrical flow reactor and optimization of treatment conditions. Journal of Environmental Science and Health, 44 (10). pp. 985-994. ISSN 1093-4529

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Abstract

This paper examines the use of electrooxidation for treatment of wastewater obtained froma pharmaceutical industry. The wastewater primarily contained Gentamicin and Dexamethasone. With NaCl as supporting electrolyte, the effluent was treated in a cylindrical flow reactor in continuous (single pass) mode under various current densities (2–5 A/dm2) and flow rates (10–40 L/h). By cyclic voltammetric (CV) analysis, the optimum condition for maximum redox reaction was determined. The efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction and power consumption were studied for different operating conditions. From the results it was observed that maximum COD reduction of about 85.56% was obtained at a flow rate of 10 L/h with an applied current density of 4 A/dm2. FT-IR spectra studies showed that during electrooxidation, the intensities of characteristic functional groups such as N-H, O-H were reduced and some new peaks also started to appear. Probable theory, reaction mechanism and modeling were proposed for the oxidation of pharmaceutical effluent. The experimental results demonstrated that electrooxidation treatment was very effective and capable of elevating the quality of treated wastewater to the reuse standard prescribed for pharmaceutical industries.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Pharmaceutical effluent; removal efficiency; NaCl; electrochemical oxidation; Ti/RuO2 anode
Subjects:	Electroorganic Pollution Control
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	TTBD CECRI
Date Deposited:	08 Apr 2012 14:52
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2012 14:52
URI:	http://cecri.csircentral.net/id/eprint/494

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