An empirical model for treatment of arsenic contaminated underground water by electrocoagulation process employing a bipolar cell configuration with continuous flow.

Arsenic (As) was removed electrochemically from underground water (GW) by electrocoagulation (EC) process employing a bipolar cell configuration with continuous flow using iron electrodes. A kinetic model derived from the Lagergren equation was applied to specify the kinetics of the arsenic removal reaction. Elucidation of the effect of the liquid flow rate on the treatment time and on the simulation results of the model was achieved. The results showed that treatment times decreased from 10.50 min to 0.75 min as the flow rate decreased from 3.500 to 0.875 L min(-1) and the current density varied from 15 to 45 A m(-2) respectively. The used sorption kinetic model successfully describes the arsenic removal by this process. The coefficients of determination were found to be very high in all cases (R(2)>0.99) indicating a good fit of the experimental data to Lagergren model.