Kinetic study of mineral oil removal from wastewater by the sono-electrochemical process

Chemical kinetics can be a useful tool for determining the optimal operating time of electrochemical processes. The main objective of the study was to determine the mineral oil removal rate by sono-electrochemical treatment. In this study, zero-, first-, and second-order kinetic models were used to determine the reaction rate of mineral oil removal with the sono-electrochemical process. The reaction rate experiments were conducted under the following optimal conditions: 8 min of treatment time, a current density of 53.1 A/m², and a flow rate of 0.23 L/s. It was found that the changes in mineral oil concentrations follow second-order kinetics with a coefficient of determination of 0.9732. The mineral oil removal efficiency was 94.4%. This study concludes that sono-electrochemical process could be a promising technology for the removal of mineral oil from wastewater, and that the mineral oil removal rate can be determined by chemical kinetics. The results obtained may be useful for the optimization of the sono-EC process and reactor design.