Comparison of electrocoagulation and chemical coagulation with fiber filters for water treatment

A combined electrocoagulation(EC)-fiber filter system has been presented as a new technology for water treatment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of applying an aluminum EC-fiber filter for water treatment. We compared the water treatment efficiency of the chemical coagulation (CC)-fiber filter and EC-fiber filter. A comparison of the EC and CC processes reveals that EC significantly outperformed CC when the water to be filtered using fiber filters was pretreated with aluminum. For particle size less than 6 μm, the removal efficiency was 66%, 43% for EC and CC, respectively, and the average removal efficiency of the total organic carbon (TOC) was 50%, 65% for CC and EC. Therefore, EC reduced the amount of aluminum utilized by 25%, and the effluent turbidity improved by approximately 0.11 NTU to 0.19 NTU. Also, the average log removal value (LRV) for heterotrophic plate count (HPC) was 2.5 and 1.9 for EC and CC. respectively. Therefore, the aluminum used for EC proved to be excellent for pretreating the water to be filtered by a fiber filter.