Pre-treatment of coal seam water with coagulation and electrocoagulation

This thesis examined innovative methods for pre-treatment of coal seam water. In order to prevent scaling and fouling of downstream reverse osmosis membranes we investigated both electrocoagulation and chemical coagulation using aluminium and iron based electrodes and/or coagulants. Application of electrocoagulation was found to significantly reduce the presence of problematic dissolved species such as silica and also alkaline earth ions which potentially can scale membranes and equipment. Chemical coagulation could also remove dissolved silica from simulated coal seam water samples but was found to be relatively ineffective when treating real coal seam water. The future study of electrocoagulation is worthy in order to determine its applicability to a wider range of coal seam water compositions and to minimise costs of use