Boron Removal from Mining and Synthetic Effluents by Electrocoagulation Using Aluminum Electrodes

Douglas Mark Lopes da Silva; Maria Tereza W D Carneiro; Josimar Ribeiro

doi:10.1155/2019/3746964

Boron Removal from Mining and Synthetic Effluents by Electrocoagulation Using Aluminum Electrodes

ScientificWorldJournal. 2019 May 9:2019:3746964. doi: 10.1155/2019/3746964. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Douglas Mark Lopes da Silva¹, Maria Tereza W D Carneiro¹, Josimar Ribeiro¹

Affiliation

¹ Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910 Vitória, ES, Brazil.

Abstract

The efficiency of the electrocoagulation method to remove boron from synthetic and mining effluents was investigated in this study. Different parameters were tested using boric acid solution and effluent collected from a mining company located in the city of Vitória-ES. The results showed a percentage of boron removal of over 60% for the synthetic and mining effluents, using aluminum electrodes, pH 7.5, current density of 14.82 mA cm^-2, and supporting electrolyte of 0.200 mol L^-1. The electrocoagulation and chemical coagulation methods were also compared, in which the percentage obtained by electrocoagulation was 56.30% higher for the mining effluent. Thus, electrocoagulation was more efficient in boron removal, especially when appropriate parameters are applied.