International Journal for Research in Technological Studies| Vol. 4, Issue 8, July 2017 | ISSN (online): 2348-1439 Copyright© IJRTS | www.ijrts.com 34 Abstract— The dairy industry is generally considered to be one of the largest food processing wastewater in many countries, especially in India. In dairy industry, in most cases, the wastewater generated is directly discharged into the nearby water bodies. Since the dairy waste water contains large concentration of COD, BOD, and oil, fats, chloride, and other elements along with several bacteria these may cause substantial health risk, and serious environmental issues.. In this paper EC and EDI techniques are used for the treatment of dairy waste water. The result shows that Copper electrodes has achieved a maximum turbidity reduction of 99.5%, COD reduction of 97.5% and BOD reduction of 90.94% in 30volt high stirring speed when the electrolysis time is set at 30 mins in electrocoagulation process. And copper electrodes yielded 97.5%, 84.84% and 99.5% removal efficiency in COD, BOD and turbidity respectively, under 30volt and 30 min electrolysis time in electrodeionization process. Both EC and EDI have achieved COD and turbidity removal up to 95-99% at high voltage and electrolysis time. Keywords— Electrocoagulation, Electrodeionization, Dairy Waste Water, Copper Electrodes I. INTRODUCTION The dairy industry is generally considered to be one of the largest food processing industry in many countries. As the importance of improved standards of wastewater treatment grows, process requirements have become more advanced [1]. The type of product being produced, the production methods, operating methods, design of the processing plant, the degree of water quality management being applied, and more, the quantity of water being conserved determines the concentration, volume, and composition of the effluents arise from this dairy industry. Due to the presence of organic load like carbohydrates, proteins and fats originating from the milk or dairy industry, effluents are concentrated in nature. However, the dairy wastewaters are characterized by high biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations, high levels of dissolved or suspended solids including fats, oils and grease, nutrients such as ammonia or minerals and phosphates and therefore it requires proper attention before they are disposed [2]. Due to the presence of organic load due to carbohydrates, proteins and fats originating from the milk, dairy industry waste effluents are concentrated in nature [3]. Since these dairy waste streams contain high concentrations of organic matter, these effluents may cause serious environmental issues. Introduction of Most of the wastewater volume generated in the dairy industry results from cleaning of transport lines and equipment between production cycles, cleaning of tank trucks, washing of milk silos and equipment malfunctions or operational errors [4- 7]. Treating dairy wastewater is thus of great importance not only for the environment, but also for the purpose of using the recycled water for use in other industrial processes [8]. Nowadays, there are many physicochemical and biological methods are used for treating dairy effluents, with the aim of reducing the volume of the sludge produced. The physicochemical processes suffer lots of disadvantage such as reagent costs are high and the soluble COD removal is low [9]. Moreover, the chemical treatments can also induce a secondary pollution due to the fact that chemical additives used for treatment may contaminate the treated water. Moreover, high removal rates of the COD are obtained even though this process does not eliminate the phosphorus and nitrogen compounds present in the dairy effluents [10]. Implementation of another complementary physicochemical treatment would reduce phosphorus and nitrogen content. In the field of electric field a number of technologies are developing for treating wastewater. Electrocoagulation and electrodeionization process are two among them. Electro coagulation is an electrolytic process that has been already experienced for the treatment of various liquid wastes [11]. Electrodeionization (EDI) is a process by which an electric field is used to remove ions and polar species from an aqueous stream by combined reverse osmosis and ion exchange method [12]. Electrocoagulation is the process of destabilizing suspended, emulsified, or dissolved contaminants in an aqueous medium by introducing an electrical current into the medium in an electrochemical cell, usually with an Al or Fe anode. Electrocoagulation involves the generation of coagulants in situ by dissolving electrically either aluminum or iron ions from aluminum or iron electrodes, respectively. The metal ions generation takes place at the anode, and hydrogen gas is released from the cathode. The hydrogen gas would also help to float the flocculated particles out of the water [13]. In its simplest form, an electrocoagulation reactor consists of an electrolytic cell with one anode and one cathode. When these electrodes connected to an external power source, the anode material will electrochemically corrode due to oxidation, while the cathode will undergo passivation [14]. During electrolysis, the positive side of EC cell undergoes anodic reactions, while on the negative side, cathodic reactions are undergone. Consumable metal plates, like iron or aluminum, are usually used as sacrificial electrodes so as to continuously produce ions in the water. The released ions neutralize the charged particles and thereby initiate coagulation. The released ions remove undesirable contaminants either by chemical reaction and Electrocoagulation and Electrodeionization Process for Dairy Wastewater Treatment using Copper Electrode Gopika G. L 1 Dr. K. Mophin Kani 2 1 PG Student 2 Assistant Professor 1,2 Department of Civil Engineering 1,2 APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, UKF College of Engineering & Technology, Kollam, Kerala India