Escalonamento da unidade piloto de eletrocoagulação-flotação para sua viabilidade comercial como uma estação de tratamento de água compacta

Abstract

The need for clean and affordable water is one of the biggest problems faced worldwide. In large cities, water treatment is carried out by conventional water treatment plants, commonly used, but which are restricted by requiring a large area for installation and a large demand for supply. New technologies have been studied for the development of systems (compact WTPs) that are easy to install and operate, compact and have great viability in serving places of difficult access and / or distant from large centers. The main objective of this work is the scaling up of an innovative technology developed at UFSM and which has been studied: the electrocoagulation-flotation (ECF) system. To scale up the system to a commercial scale, it was designed for a flow rate of 11.88 L.s−1 and a subsequent comparison was made in relation to the area and height occupied by the scaled system with a compact coagulation-sedimentation WTP, designed for the same flow rate of the ECF system, installed in the city of Garibaldi/RS. For the scaling, previous studies and a literature review were carried out to understand all the parameters that encompass the system and its functionality. The final ECF system consists of 4 lines, where each one serves a flow rate of 2.98 L.s−1, having an electrocoagulator followed by two modules of a helical tubular flocculator. The comparison of the mentioned systems showed that the ECF system uses an area 16.36% smaller than the compact coagulation-sedimentation WTP, and a height 8.95% smaller, occupying a volume 23.85% smaller compared to the total volume of the WTP.