System

What the system can do

Clean & reusable water

Our systems take polluted wastewater and converts it into recreational quality, reusable water, allowing people to reduce the strain on freshwater sources.

Scalability

Our systems come in different sizes and capabilities, allowing for easy upgrades as you scale your fresh water needs, or wastewater production.

Reduce chemical usage

The electrocoagulation process allows for large amounts of contaminated water to be cleaned without the need for chemical or biological additives.

What is electrocoagulation and how does it work?

Electrocoagulation (EC) is a technique used for wash water treatment, wastewater treatment, industrial processed water, and and medical treatment.

Electrocoagulation has become a rapidly growing area of wastewater treatment due to its ability to remove contaminants that are generally more difficult to remove by filtration or chemical treatment systems, such as emulsified oil, total petroleum hydrocarbons, refractory organics, suspended solids, and heavy metals.

With the latest technologies, reduction of electricity requirements, and miniaturization of the needed power supplies, EC systems have now become affordable for water treatment plants and industrial processes worldwide.

Background

Electrocoagulation: “electro”, meaning to apply an electrical charge to water, and “coagulation”, meaning the process of changing the particle surface charge, allowing suspended matter to form an agglomeration, is an advanced and economical water treatment technology.

It effectively removes suspended solids to sub-micrometre levels, breaks emulsions such as oil and grease or latex, and oxidizes and eradicates heavy metals from water without the use of filters or the addition of separation chemicals.

The Product

Electrocoagulation is performed by applying an electric current across metal plates that are submerged in water. Heavy metals, organics and inorganics are primarily held in water by electrical charges.

By applying another electrical charge to the contaminated water, the charges that hold the particles together are established and separate from the clean water.

The particles then coagulate to form a mass which can easily be removed. This technology is appealing to environmentally concerned companies as it eliminates the need for chemical or biological additives or demulsifies to deal with wastewater.

Coagulation Process

Coagulation is one of the most important physio-chemical reactions used in water treatment. Ions (heavy metals) and colloids (organic and inorganic) are mostly held in solution by electrical charges. The addition of ions with opposite charges destabilizes the colloids, allowing them to coagulate. Coagulation can be achieved by a chemical coagulant or by electrical methods.

The mechanism of coagulation has been the subject of continual review. It is generally accepted that coagulation is brought about the primarily by the reduction of the net surface charge to a point where the colloidal particles, previously stabilized by electrostatic repulsion, can approach closely enough for van der Waals forces to hold them together and allow aggregation.

The reduction of the surface charge is a consequence of the decrease of the repulsive potential of the electrical double layer by the presence of an electrolyte having opposite charge. In the EC process, the coagulant is generated in situ by electrolytic oxidation of an appropriate anode material. In the process, charged ionic species - metals or otherwise - are removed from wastewater by allowing it to react with an ion having an opposite charge, or with floc metallic hydroxides generated within the effluent.

Electrocoagulation offers an alternative to the use of metal salts or polymers and polyelectrolyte for breaking stable emulsions and suspensions. The technology removes metals, colloidal solids and particles, and soluble inorganic pollutants from aqueous media by introducing highly charged polymeric metal hydroxide species. These species neutralize the electrostatic charges on suspended solids and oil droplets to facilitate agglomeration or coagulation and resultant separation from the aqueous phase. The treatment prompts the precipitation of certain metals and salts.

Benefits to Electrocoagulation

Mechanical filtration address only two issues in wash rack wash water: suspended solids larger than 30 um, and free oil and grease. Emulsified oil and grease cause damage to the media filters, resulting in very high maintenance costs.

Electrocoagulation addresses any size of suspended solids (including destructive >30 um particles and heavy metals that can wear-and-tear pressure washers and pose an environmental and employee hazard).

Chemical treatment addresses suspended solids, oil and grease, and some heavy metals-but may require up to three polymer and multiple pH adjustments for proper treatment. This technology requires the addition of chemicals resulting in expensive, messy, and labour-intensive treatment.

This process also requires addition of compressed air for floatation of coagulated contaminants. Generally filtration is also required as a post-treatment phase for polishing. Electrocoagulation requires no filters, no daily maintenance, no additives, and removes any size of suspended solids, oil, grease and heavy metals.

Advantages

EC requires simple equipment and is easy to operate with sufficient operational latitude to handle most problems encountered on running.

Wastewater treated by EC gives palatable, clear, colourless and odourless water.

Sludge formed by EC tends to be readily settable and easy to de-water, compared to conventional alum or ferric hydroxide sludges, because the mainly metallic oxides/hydroxides have no residual charge.

Flocs formed by EC are similar to chemical floc, except that EC floc tends to be march larger, contains less bound water, is acid-resistant and more stable, and therefore, can be separated faster by filtration.

EC can produce effluent with less TDS content as compared with chemical treatments, particularly if the metal ions can be precipitated as either hydroxides or carbonates (such as magnesium and calcium.) EC generally has little if any impact on sodium and potassium Ions in solution.

The EC process has the advantage of removing the smallest colloidal particles, because the applied electric field neutralises any residual charge, thereby facilitating the coagulation.

The EC process generally voids excessive use of chemicals and so there is reduced requirement to neutralize excess chemicals and less possibility of secondary pollution caused by chemical substances added at high concentration as when chemical coagulation of wastewater is used.

The gas bubbles produced during electrolysis can conveniently carry the pollutant components to the top of the solution where it can be more easily concentrated, collected and removed by the motorised skimmer.

The electrolytic process in the EC cell are controlled electrically and with no moving parts, thus requiring less maintenance.

Summary

Electrocoagulation is performed by applying an electric current across metal plates that are submerged in water. Heavy metals, organics and inorganics are primarily held in water by electrical charges. By applying another electrical charge to the contaminated water, the charges that hold the particles together are destabilised and separate from the clean water. The particles then coagulate to form a mass which can easily be removed. This technology is appealing to environmentally concerned companies as it eliminates the need for chemical or biological additives or demulsifies to deal with wastewater.

The System