Miada Abubaker Ali
UAE University School of Chemical Engineering, UAE
Title: Using Electrocoagulation to remove Chloride and Ammonium from Reject Brine treated by Solvay Process
Biography
Biography: Miada Abubaker Ali
Abstract
The excessive use of desalination, which is due to the increase in fresh water demand, results in large productions of reject brine. Therefore, the development of an efficient treatment process of the reject brine becomes vital. The Solvay process is one of the main treatment technologies, wherein NH3 is introduced to converting soluble Na+ into insoluble NaHCO3. Although the concentration of Na+ ions are reduced in this process, Cl- ions are not affected. In addition, the concentration of NH4+ ions increase. Electrocoagulation has been tested for the remove Cl- and NH4+ ions and to regenerate the NH3. When no current was applied, a very small removal of the ions was recorded. Applying a current density of 0.1167 A/cm2 caused an increase in the removal of and Cl-, by 45.9% and 25.87%, respectively at 20°C, 71.55% and 26.88%, respectively at 30°C. This clearly proves that the main removal was due to the electrocoagulation. The effects of current density, initial concentration, and temperature have been studied on the ions removal. It was found that increasing the current density and/or the temperature was found to decrease the residual ions concentration. Whereas, increasing the initial ions concentration resulted in decreasing the percentage removal.