Characterization and treatment of selected food industrial effluents by coagulation and adsorption techniques

Food and milk processing industries consume large quantities of water. The food industrial effluents in general are characterized by high Biological Oxygen Demand and Chemical Oxygen Demand along with fats, oil–grease and many other recoverable nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. In the present investigation thorough treatment studies were carried out on diary, sweet-snacks and ice-cream industrial effluents using alum, electrocoagulation and powdered activated charcoal as adsorbent. Characterization of the effluents was also carried out to check the pollution potential of these effluents. More emphasis was given on the representative water parameters mainly pH, Electrical Conductivity, Total Dissolved Solids, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Turbidity and Hardness. The electrocoagluation was performed with aluminum electrodes at different time intervals in order to check the variations in effluent parameters. Present studies revealed that electrocoagluation and adsorption have better ability to reduce the water parameters.