Electrocoagulation and Its Application in Food Wastewater Treatment

Electrocoagulation is a process combining coagulation, flotation, and electrochemistry, which is capable of removing recalcitrant contaminants in various type of food industry wastewaters (e.g., palm oil mill effluent (POME), dairy wastewater, brewery, etc.). Food industry wastewater contains high levels of organic substances. Discharging such wastewaters can cause severe environmental problems. Being one of the greener options for treating wastewater, this chapter discusses the fundamental mechanisms of electrocoagulation and provides examples of its application in food wastewater together with the highlight of its trend and challenges. Chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD₅), color, pH and total suspended solids (TSS) are typically used as the removal indication of the wastewater treatment efficiency. For instance, some research studies found that it could effectively treat COD of POME up to 99.26%, dairy wastewater at 98.84% and coffee processing wastewater up to 87%. Operating parameters of electrocoagulation which governs the whole mechanism as well as hybrid electrocoagulation treatment will be analysed in this chapter.