Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research Vol. 78, September 2019, pp. 624-628 Reclamation of Model Wastewater Containing Rhodamine B by Electrochemical Fenton (ECF) process N R Vaghela 1 and K Nath 2 * 1 Department of Chemical Engineering Government Engineering College Bharuch – 392002, Gujarat, India *2 Department of Chemical Engineering, G H Patel College of Engineering & Technology [Affiliated to Gujarat Technological University, Ahmadabad], Vallabh Vidyanagar-388120, Gujarat, India Received 29 October 2018; revised 23 June 2019; accepted 18 July 2019 Treatment of the Synthetic Rhodamine B (RhB) wastewater by Electrochemical Fenton (ECF) processes for colour removal in batch mode using commercially available iron plates as electrodes was studied. Colour removal efficiency was determined for the ECF process by considering the effects of different variables such as pH, current density, RhB concentration and temperature. Improvement in colour removal efficiency was obtained when H 2 O 2 was added as an oxidizing agent. The colour removal efficiency reached 94.89 % at the optimum experimental conditions (pH 3.0, 100 A/m 2 , 50 mg/l RhB concentration, 5 minutes, 30 o C and dosage of 0.2 M H 2 O 2 ). Electrical energy consumption was calculated as 2.09 KWh/m 3 . The ECF process was found capable to achieve the higher colour removal efficiencies with potential for wastewater treatment. Keywords: Electrochemical Fenton; Wastewater, Rhodamine B, colour removal Introduction Rhodamine B (RhB) is a fluorescent basic dye, widely used in paper, paint, leather and textile industries. Roughly 1-2% of RhB loss occurs during production which comes ultimately in the effluent. RhB contaminated wastewater needs reclamation to reduce the environmental impact as a result of its carcinogenic and teratogenic effects 1 . Amongst several conventional treatment strategies adsorption 2 , chemical and electro-coagulation 3 and biological processes are extensively reported in the literature. However, none of the aforementioned methods could offer a viable solution to the treatment of dye wastewater due to various reasons such as long treatment time, regeneration of spent adsorbents, sludge disposal, incomplete degradation of complex dye molecules etc. As an alternative strategy, electrochemical Fenton (ECF) process could be attractive due to its simple and cost effective operation without any need of addition of chemical reagents 4,5 . The effect of various operating parameters such as initial pH, current density, initial dye concentration, temperature was extensively studied using iron as electrodes in a monopolar configuration in an undivided electrochemical reactor and colour removal efficiency was calculated. In addition electrical energy consumption in the process was also evaluated. Materials and methods Rhodamine B (chemical formula C 28 H 31 ClN 2 O 3 ) was collected from Kohinoor Group of Industries, Ankleshwar, India. It has molecular weight of 479.017 g/mol and maximum absorption wavelength ( max ) 554 nm. A Synthetic solution was prepared by dissolving RhB dye in DI water and 1000 ppm stock solution was prepared. Subsequently, required concentration was prepared by diluting the stock solution. Analytical grade HCl, NaCl, NaOH, H 2 O 2 was obtained from M/s Merck, India. In all experiments, double distilled water (conductivity: 1 μS/cm) was used to prepare the solutions. Commercially available iron plates were used as electrodes (150×50×2 mm). Experimental Procedure All the experiments were carried out in 250 ml cylindrical glass beaker in batch mode. Two plates of iron having a dimension of 150×50×2 mm were used ————— * Author for Correspondence Email: kaushiknath@gcet.ac.in