Abstract Electrocoagulation (EC) is one of the most cost-effective techniques for eliminating pollutants from wastewater. The objective of the present work was to develop a novel low-cost EC anode-based aluminum scrap shape by valorizing used aluminum cans, in attempts to increase the contact rate between the pollutant molecules and EC anode leading to enhance the pollutants removal efficiency from urban wastewater. Moreover, to optimize the EC operative conditions with reducing the number of required experiments, modeling by Box-Behnken design (BBD) in response surface methodology was performed to investigate the effects of many operating parameters: initial pH, applied current, operating time and packed density, on the removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), phosphorous (P) and fecal coliforms (FC). Considering the treatment energy consumption, the results led to two important operative conditions for cost-effective EC treatment: economic and optimal conditions for experimental and modeled removals. The predicted results from BBD modeling regarding economic operative conditions were found to be COD (Y1) 80%, BOD (Y2) 84%, P (Y3) 96%, and FC (Y4) 99%, with an energy consumption (Y5) of 3.50 kWh.m-3. Accordingly, experimentally validation using economic operative conditions resulted in removal efficiencies of COD (78.5%), BOD (83%), P (94.7%), and FC (99%) with a lower energy consumption of 2.52 kWh.m-3. Hence, the predicted results revealed a good agreement with the experimental data. These findings could pave the way to reduce significantly the number of required experiments for other research works, and make aluminum based-electrode as a promising candidate for development and scale-up a low-cost EC electrode.

中文翻译：

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用于实际城市污水处理的新型电凝聚阳极的开发：优化操作条件的实验和建模研究

摘要 电凝聚 (EC) 是去除废水中污染物最具成本效益的技术之一。本工作的目的是通过对用过的铝罐进行增值来开发一种新型低成本的基于 EC 阳极的铝废料形状，以尝试增加污染物分子与 EC 阳极之间的接触率，从而提高城市污染物的去除效率。废水。此外，为了通过减少所需实验次数来优化 EC 操作条件，在响应面方法中通过 Box-Behnken 设计 (BBD) 进行建模以研究许多操作参数的影响：初始 pH 值、施加的电流、操作时间和填充密度，对化学需氧量 (COD)、生化需氧量 (BOD)、磷 (P) 和粪便大肠菌群 (FC) 的去除效率。考虑到处理能耗，结果导致了具有成本效益的 EC 处理的两个重要操作条件：实验和模型去除的经济和最佳条件。BBD 模型关于经济运行条件的预测结果为 COD (Y1) 80%、BOD (Y2) 84%、P (Y3) 96% 和 FC (Y4) 99%，能耗 (Y5) 3.50 kWh.m-3。因此，使用经济运行条件的实验验证导致 COD (78.5%)、BOD (83%)、P (94.7%) 和 FC (99%) 的去除效率，能耗较低，为 2.52 kWh.m-3。因此，预测结果与实验数据吻合良好。这些发现可以为显着减少其他研究工作所需的实验数量铺平道路，