Journal of Environmental Biology

Review on challenges and opportunities in the removal of nitrate from wastewater using electrochemical method

K. S. Rajmohan^1,2,*? M. Gopinath² and Raghuram Chetty¹

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai-600036, India

²Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering Studies, University of Petroleum Energy Studies, Dehradun-248007, India

*Corresponding Author E-mail: ksrajmohan@ddn.upes.ac.in

Publication Data

Paper received:

21 September 2015

Revised received:

04 May 2016

Accepted:

24 August 2016

Abstract

Failure to treat waste waters from the industries before discharging it into water sources has led to contamination of water. Providing clean drinking water to the next generation will be a major challenge ahead of us. There are many different methods to treat contaminated water; one being bioelectrochemical treatment. Application of electric field to a bio-denitrification unit is considered to be a way to address these challenges and hence, improve the efficiency of separation. Recently, successful attempts have been made to demonstrate the removal of nitrate from waste water. Various metals have been employed as cathodes, which are known to electrochemically reduce nitrate and copper show better catalytic activity in comparison to other transition metals. In this review, bioelectrochemical reactors for nitrate removal was analysed and compared with conventional methods. Also, the opportunities and challenges in the bioelectrochemical reactors are discussed herein.   

 Key words

Bio-electrochemical, Cathode, Denitrification, Nitrate, Wastewater

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