Research Article Optimization of Electrochemical Treatment Process Conditions for Distillery Effluent Using Response Surface Methodology

Copyright © 2015 P. Arulmathi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Distillery industry is recognized as one of the most polluting industries in India with a large amount of annual effluent production. In this present study, the optimization of electrochemical treatment process variables was reported to treat the color and COD of distillery spent wash using Ti/Pt as an anode in a batch mode. Process variables such as pH, current density, electrolysis time, and electrolyte dose were selected as operation variables and chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color removal efficiency were considered as response variable for optimization using response surface methodology. Indirect electrochemical-oxidation process variables were optimized using Box-Behnken response surface design (BBD). The results showed that electrochemical treatment process effectively removed the COD (89.5%) and color (95.1%) of the distillery industry spent wash under the optimum conditions: pH of 4.12, current density of 25.02mA/cm2, electrolysis time of 103.27min, and electrolyte (NaCl) concentration of 1.67 g/L, respectively. 1