Electroflotocoagulation of Emulsified Cooling Oils as a Method of Pollution Control

Abstract

This research includes the removal of pollution produced from used coolant emulsion oils especially soluble oil (7201). In many types of liquid effluents, oil – water emulsions can be among the most vexing to treat, even through such streams may contain only very small quantity of oil. Untraditional oil removal operation (electroflotocoagulation) is used in this research, which consist of glass cell 102 cm in height. A sacrificial Aluminum Anode is placed on a perforated glass disc at a distance 24-cm from the bottom. Above it is placed the upper electrode, Aluminum cathode is fixed on a movable glass tube. Product water was fed into settling vessels from the outlet arm 17 cm above the glass disc. Oily flocs and aluminum hydroxide were removed by a second side arm 45.5 cm above the product water arm. Sets of experiments were carried out to find the efficiency of electroflotocoagulation to remove the concentrate soluble oil (7201) from water. Multivariables were studied such as: applied potential, space between the two electrodes, settling time and initial soluble oil (7201) concentration. These variables have effect on the soluble oil (7201) percentage removal. The experimental results were represented in two mathematical em-pirical correlations and three dimensional graphs which describe the soluble oil (7201) removal efficiency as a function of current, settling time and in the second, initial soluble oil (7201) concentration respectively.