A review on the feasibility of electrolytic treatment of wastewater: Prospective and constraints

Abstract

Electrolytic treatment of wastewater utilizes the electric energy to remover the pollutants from the wastewater. Considerable efforts have been made to purify the different types of wastewater using various electrolytic treatment devices, apparatus and reactors. The present review focuses on the recent development in the electrolytic treatments considering the views of the past work in this field. Most studies have been performed on iron, steel, aluminium and zinc electrodes using various current densities and electrolysis time. Moreover, these studies have been carried out on the removal of different physico-chemical, heavy metals and microbiological parameters using different types of wastewater. In this review the main emphasis has been given to the removal of physico-chemical parameters viz., colour, turbidity, EC, TSS, BOD, COD and heavy metals of the wastewater. The literature on the electrolytic treatment methods using different types of wastewater is surveyed and physico-chemical parameters of wastewater are reviewed. Besides this impact of current density, electrode types, time of electric current application along with the removal efficiency are also discussed in the present review. Additionally, various aspects of the electrolytic treatment of wastewater like impact of temperature, coagulation and flocculation rate are also discussed to make the literature more specific and generalization to understand the electrolytic treatment of wastewater. Therefore, the future directions of the research could be focused on the more efficient removal of pollutants from the wastewater using electrolytic technology in order to achieve the safe limits of wastewater for the reuse and discharge as per water quality standards.