Scale-up of electrochemical oxidation system for treatment of produced water generated by Brazilian petrochemical industry

Scale-up of anodic oxidation system is critical to the practical application of electrochemical treatment in biorefractory organic wastewater treatment. In this study, the scale-up of electrochemical flow system was investigated by treating petrochemical wastewater using platinized titanium (Ti/Pt) and boron-doped diamond (BDD) anodes. It was demonstrated that flow cell was successfully scaled-up because when it was compared with batch mode (Rocha et al. 2012b), higher performances on organic matter removal were achieved. Under the suitable operating conditions and better anode material, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of petrochemical wastewater was reduced from 2,746 to 200 mg L−1 within 5 h with an energy consumption of only 56.2 kWh m−3 in the scaled-up BDD anode system. These results demonstrate that anode flow system is very promising in practical bio-refractory organic wastewater treatment.