Comparative Study of Commercial Oxide Electrodes Performance in Electrochemical Degradation of Organics in Aqueous Solutions

In this paper the potentiality of two types of DSA(R) commercial electrodes, for electrochemical treatment of effluents, is investigated. Oxide anodes, with nominal composition of 70TiO(2)/30RuO(2) and 45IrO(2)/55Ta(2)O(5), were used in a flow-cell reactor for the electrooxidation of phenol. Comparative results were presented as phenol concentration decay as a function of electrolysis time, as well as COD and TOC concentration reduction. The cell reactor was operated at current densities, ranging from 15 to 150 mA cm(-2) and solution linear velocity was 0.24 m s(-1). Results reported in this paper showed that phenol and quinones were degraded to a very low concentration, besides only a small portion of the organic carbon is reduced. Starting from 100 mg L-1, after five hours of electrolysis at 100 mA cm-2, concentrations reached 0.4 mg L-1 of phenol, 1 mg L-1 of hydroquinone, 7 mg L-1 of benzoquinone and TOC was reduced by 35%.