Solutions

Are one of the major group of emerging contaminants (ECs). It comprises plasticizers, insecticides and pesticides, food preservatives, cleansing agents, and many other chemicals regularly used in daily life. ECs are gaining prominence in recent years mainly due to the rise in awareness among people regarding their toxicity. These compounds are forms intermediates upon partial degradation by external factors. Both the parent compounds and the intermediates pose an acute threat to human and animal health, at the same time affecting the environment in which it gets accumulated in abundance. ECs degrade at very slow rates, by both photo and biological degradation methods, and hence tend to stay for longer durations. Conventional treatment plants have been studied to be not very effective in the removal of ECs. Hence different treatment methods need to be employed separately for their removal like degradation and adsorption techniques.

For more than a century, different treatment methods like adsorption, advanced oxidation processes, chemical coagulation, electrochemical processes, bio-electrochemical and membrane are tested for the effective wastewater treatment. Electrochemical Advanced oxidation processes (EAOPs) seem to be a promising technology for the treatment of persistent organic pollutants.

All types of organic molecules can be effectively degraded by EAOPs, by producing OH radicals, which have a high oxidation potential. EAOPs have an added benefit over other treatment methods since they transfer contaminants from one phase to another and demonstrate a significant mineralization capability under reasonably mild operating conditions Electrochemical combined AOPs received a lot of attention due to their higher pollutant mineralization rates. For the treatment of wastewater from numerous industries, electrochemical oxidation (EO) and electrocoagulation (EC) offer a combination of favourable properties

MPECT- it is a complex combined electrochemical technology capable of destroying organic pollutants until they are completely mineralized.

Petroleum refinery wastewaters (PRW) are considered as refractory wastewaters, which contain inorganic compounds as well as complex aromatics organic compounds. The wastewaters generated from petroleum refinery processing have been recognized as highly toxic and relatively more refractory to natural degradation in comparison with other types of wastewaters that are generated from various industrial activities.

On the basis of the type of oil used, type of processes, and the complexity of the refinery, the generated wastewaters in oil refineries may have different chemical compositions (Generally, the COD; phenol; benzene; heavy metals; chromium in addition to other pollutants are found in refinery effluent. Various traditional methods have been utilized for PRW treatment, namely, flocculation,
coagulation, adsorption, biological process, membrane, and others. The most common industrial process is a biological one. In these methods, contaminants are converted from one phase to another or partially degrading PRW; therefore, these approaches are not optimal.

Electrochemical Advanced oxidation processes (EAOPs) can quickly eliminate the non-biodegraded contaminants existing in the aquatic environment. Organic pollutants in wastewater can be removed with great efficiency by these processes, even when they are present in low concentrations without creating environmentally harmful byproducts. Because of its ability to generate hydroxyl radicals in high concentrations. Furthermore, electricity which is used in the (EAOPs+EC) process is considered as a clean energy source and the process as a whole does not produce secondary contaminants. The MPECT is an environment friendly technique for treating (PRW) since it does not use any dangerous reagents.

Fish wastewater can be characterized by high nitrogen content, generally forming ammonium, nitrites, and nitrates. Additionally, phosphate , high chemical oxygen demand (COD), high biological oxygen demand (BOD), turbidity , and suspended solids.

The FWW present toxicity, which, according to the toxicity classification based on toxic units classifies this effluent as “very toxic”. The FWW ecotoxicity can be ascribed to different organic and inorganic substances.

Biological processes, the most common and economical wastewater treatments, are often stalled by the high organic load/salinity presented by the Fish waste water.  Moreover, they are ineffective in degrading refractory compounds, which persist after the biological treatment. The high organic load and the salinity content presented by fish wastewater (FWW), although a hindrance to the application of traditional treatment processes, are favourable conditions for the treatment by electrochemical oxidation.

MPECT is particularly advantageous as it is straightforward and environmentally friendly, devoid of sludge or concentrates generation, and does not necessitate the addition of chemicals, given that the effluent exhibits substantial electrical conductivity. This process relies on the in-situ production of the highly reactive hydroxyl radical (HO•), which can react unselectively and instantaneously with the surrounding organic pollutants.

As a result of combined wastewater treatment technology-MPECT, purified water can be used for the production processes of other enterprises that consume large amounts of water.

A clean and reasonable water supply to meet the needs of the growing global population has become a great challenge of this century. Surface and groundwater, which are a major source of drinkable water supplies, besides desalinated water in water-scarce areas, are commonly contaminated by various pollutants, primarily heavy metals. Increasing urbanization and expansion of industries, such as metallurgical industries, electroplating units, mining operations, electronic manufacturing units, fertilizer industries and leather industries, have resulted in discharging a considerable amount of wastewater containing high concentrations of trace metals, besides other contaminants, into the environment. . Intake of chromium, lead, copper, nickel and cobalt may cause leukaemia, anaemia, hypertension, heart problems and cancer.

Wastewater from metal industries contains heavy metals and other species belongs to the group ofpersistent toxic substance, which is considered to be hazardous to the environment, human health, irritates plants and animals. Heavy metals are concerned because of their toxicity, which is typically present in metal finishing wastewater with cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, silver, zinc and tin.

These toxic heavy metals cannot be easily removed from the wastewater without the use of advanced treatment technologies . The practiced methods for removing heavy metals are adsorption, chemical precipitation and aquatic plants. However, most of these have serious drawbacks, such as low efficiency, long treatment time or high operating cost. Therefore, effective and low-cost techniques need to be employed before discharging industrial effluents.

Among conventional methods adopted, electrochemical-based approaches are currently used worldwide to remove metal ions because of their unique merits, no consumption of chemicals, cost-effectiveness and simplicity. Electrocoagulation (EC), which is one of the electrochemical methods, has been successfully adopted for the remediation of wastewater from a wide range of pollutants, such as heavy metals, organic matter, textile dyes and pharmaceutical wastewaters. Therefore, there is a need for a feasible and cost-effective technology for the target removal of metals.

The ECOR MPECT (Electro-coagulation) has some advantages over the traditional flotation and coagulation such as better removal rate to the small colloidal particles, along with that, the electricity applied to the system sets the whole process in motion and made out the larger probability of coagulation. We mean to treat the waste water only by control key factors and without the support of chemical additives.

Textile industry causes considerable higher impacts to water pollution by discharging their effluents into various receiving bodies includes ponds, rivers and other public sewer. Major pollutants load from the textile industries are from the several of their wet-processing operations like scouring, bleaching, mercerizing and dyeing.

Among these various processes, dyeing process normally uses large amount of water for dyeing, fixing and washing processes. Several primary, secondary and tertiary treatment processes have been used to treat these effluents. These included flocculation, chemical coagulation, simple sedimentation, aerated lagoons, aerobic activated sludge, trickling filters and reverse osmosis. However, these treatments are not found effective against removal all dyes and chemicals used in the industry. These effluents do only contain high concentration dyes, but also contain the chemicals used in the various processing stage. Based on the previously research, biological treatment of textile wastewater showed low degradation efficiency because of the presence of biologically inert high molecular weight dyestuff. Physical adsorption is effective for removal of non-biodegradable pollutants, but it is quite expensive and difficult for regenerating the adsorbents. Due to the large complexity of the composition in textile wastewater, most of these traditional methods are becoming inadequa.

MPECT use of electrochemical technique for the treatment of textile wastewater. In electro-oxidation, the main reagent that is used here is electron (clean reagent) where it removes the organic matter in textile wastewater without generating any secondary pollutants and also there need for adding extra reagent. The unique features in electrochemical oxidation process such as simplicity and robustness in structure and operation, it is possible that this can be developed as a cost-effective technology for textile wastewater treatment.
In the electrochemical oxidation process ECHOR MPECT, the organic and toxic pollutants present in wastewater such as dye usually destroyed either direct or indirect oxidation process.

Industrial wastewater is now one of the major sources of water pollution. Apart from organic carbon, wastewater also contains significant amounts of organic/inorganic nutrients like nitrogen, protein, ammonia, nitrate, and phosphate, including biorefractory organic compounds which resist conventional treatment techniques. Dairy wastewater is characterized by a high content of hardly biodegradable dissolved, COD, BOD, colloidal, and suspended organic matter.   The main contributors of organic charge to these effluents are carbohydrates, proteins and fats originating from milk.

The application of electrochemical methods for the removal of organic pollutants has some. Chemical oxidation methods can be used for the oxidative decomposition of many organic pollutants, but these methods require large amounts of reactive chemical reagents. Biological and electrochemical methods have little negative effects on the environment, because these techniques do not involve the use of harmful reagents.

The use of complex technology MPECT (ECOR+ECHOR) allows the destruction of complex organic compounds and the removal of fats and suspends solids.

The presence of pharmaceutical residues in wastewater has become a major concern for environmental and potentially health related problems. Despite their low concentration in the effluents, they could contribute to issues of endocrine disruption, antibiotic resistance, carcinogenicity and overall toxicity. Following normal ingestion, a variable but significant portion of the pharmaceutcals will be rejected through urine or stools, and thus pharmaceutically active compounds (PhAC) reach aquatic environments. It is then possible to detect traces of these substances in surface waters, groundwater and even in drinking water, where their concentration increases with time.

Wastewater from hospitals, hotels and airports is often discharged into the city’s sewage system and treated at the municipal treatment centers . The low concentration of PhAC, their often non-biodegradable characteristics and their complex structures result in high resilience to water treatment processes through activated sludge or even by membrane bioreactors. Pharmaceutical pollutants are then released in the environment and could pose a risk for flora, fauna and even for humans. Moreover, the presence of antibiotics and other disinfecting agents influence the genetic composition of microorganisms and can increase bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

Given the multiple problems associated with pharmaceutical pollutants, a treatment at the source to reduce or to remove all traces of these pollutants in the environment would be advantageous. The biological processes alone could not effectively remove all the organic traces found in usual WW.

For the destruction and decomposition of difficult-to-oxidize organic pollutants contained in these wastewaters, the MPECT hybrid technology is used.

The processes are commonly called Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation Processes (EAOPs) and, promote the generation of large amounts of highly reactive species from the in-situ oxidation and reduction reactions induced in the effluents without the addition of chemicals for the removal of organics.

Electrochemical oxidation is the most widely used EAOP for the removal of organic pollutants in water matrices. Specifically, this process consists of the abatement of organics in an electrolytic cell by different mechanisms:

• direct electron transfer to the anode and
• indirect or mediated oxidation by highly reactive species formed from water discharge at the anode surface.

The paint industry is one of the most innovative and dynamic manufacturing industries. Paint factories produce large volume of wastewater consisting of a complex mixture of solvents, pigments, emulsifiers and other toxic compounds depending on the specific production method. Due to the variety of chemicals used, paint wastewater also contains large amounts of suspended particles, chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, color, as well as heavy metals. The discharge of paint wastewater into the environment without being properly treated impedes sunlight penetration (inhibition of photosynthesis), affects the quality of receiving streams (exhaustion of dissolved oxygen), and can be toxic to treatment processes, food chain organisms and aquatic life. Pollutants in paint effluent can cause adverse human health effects, such as respiratory problems, muscle weakness and kidney damage.

The treatment is a demanding, multi-step process with the primary purpose to reduce COD and BOD levels by removing as many contaminants as possible. Conventional industrial water treatment does not remove sufficient amounts of pollutants entering watercourses; thus, industrial wastewater is considered potentially hazardous to freshwater ecosystems.

The commonly used methods include coagulation, adsorption, flocculation, filtration and biological processes such as composting. The biological degradation of the organic pollutants included in paint industrial wastewater is very difficult.

Nowadays, a combination of different effective treatment methods is also used to safely dispose of or, recycle the treated wastewater. MPECT-it is combination of different effective electrochemical (ECOR+ECHOR) treatment methods, allowing to achieve 99% purification of paint wastewater.