Abdulhadi, B (2022) Enhancing the removal of refractory pollutants from water using microwave-electrocoagulation system. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

The global population faces an increasing water shortage due to the growth in both population and human activities. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop efficient water/wastewater treatment methods to reverse the increasing risk of water shortages. In this context, the electrocoagulation (EC) method could be a suitable solution for this dilemma because it is eco-friendly and affordable. However, it was reported that the presence of organic matter can severely reduce the efficiency of the electrocoagulation method to remove heavy metals from water due to the ability of organic matter to chelate heavy metal ions in water creating complex pollutants which are hard to remove by electrocoagulation. On the other hand, microwave (MW) radiation has been reported to have an effective energy mechanism considering the way its energy, with any power, interact and couple with the substrate being radiated. This efficient mechanism can be used to decompose the organic matter in the solution and enhance the performance of the EC unit to remove heavy metals from water. This research therefore will develop a novel method for continues flow water purification using the electrocoagulation and microwave technologies in one combined system. It was also found that the EC reactor successfully removed more than 99% of 20 mg/L of Iron after 30 minutes of treatment at pH 7, ES of 5 mm and CD of 1 mA/cm2 in batch experiments. Then, 100 mg/L of organic matter was added to a solution containing iron (iron of 20 mg/L), to validate the impacts of organic matter on the removal of inorganic pollutants. The results obtained from this part confirmed the grave impact of organic matter on the efficiency of the electrocoagulation. It was noticed that adding 100 mg/L of OM to the water reduced the removal of iron from 95% to 17% in continuous flow mode. The last step in this project was the application of the suggested system (MW-EC) to enhance the removal of iron in the presence of OM (20 mg/L of iron and 100 mg/L OM). The microwaving process was conducted using two MW reactors, namely MW rectangular reactor (MWRR) and MW cylindrical reactor (MWCR). It was found that the MW-EC method improves the removal of iron by 45% in MWRR-EC system and by 27% in MWRC-EC system, at flow rate of 30 mL/min and MW power of 200 W. In conclusion, the results of the present project confirm the negative impacts of the OM on the removability of iron by the EC method, and also proved the effectiveness of the MW in the enhancement of the refractory pollutants by the EC. Thus, it could be reasonable to recommend the use of the MW-EC system in the developing countries as an effective and affordable treatment method to remove refractory pollutants from water.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Water Treatment; ElectroCoagulation; Microwave; Heavy Metal; Reactive Dye; Nitrate; Iron; Organic Matter; Continuous Flow; EDTA
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
Divisions:	Civil Engineering & Built Environment
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2022 10:09
Last Modified:	13 Sep 2022 13:06
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00016394
Supervisors:	Kot, P, Hashim, K, Shaw, A and Al Khaddar, R
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16394

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