Arsenic and fluoride removal by electrocoagulation process: A general review

The exposure to low or high concentrations of arsenic (As), either due to the direct consumption of As contaminated drinking water, or indirectly through daily intake of As contaminated food may be fatal to the human health. Arsenic contamination in drinking water threatens more than 150 millions peoples all over the world. Around 110 millions of those peoples live in 10 countries in South and South-East Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Taiwan and Vietnam. Therefore, treatment of As contaminated water and soil could be the only effective option to minimize the health hazard. Therefore, keeping in view the above facts, an attempt has been made in this paper to review As contamination, its effect on human health and various conventional and advance technologies which are being used for the removal of As from soil and water.

Electrocoagulation is an electrochemical wastewater treatment technology that is currently experiencing both increased popularity and considerable technical improvements. There has been relatively little effort to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of the processes, particularly those that could provide design parameters to optimize the performances of this relatively simple and inexpensive technique. In a research programme to delineate the mechanisms of the fundamental processes involved in, the authors have realized that the technology has been insufficiently reviewed with emphasis on the fundamentals and their relationship to the performance of this technology. This paper presents an in-depth discussion and consideration of the factors that need to be addressed for optimum performance of this technology. Recent improvements of this technique and the theoretical model studies are also reviewed.