Resumen
In the South-East Asia, specifically in Malaysia, one of the fastest growing industries is textile industry. Nevertheless, preliminary studies prove that dyeing process in the textile manufacturing consumes a large amount of water, thus channelling harmful wastewater with high concentration of entrained dyes, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total dissolved solid (TDS) and total suspended solid (TSS) contents into the environment. Due to recalcitrant nature of the dyes, effluents of textile industry are known to be the most difficult to treat. This research investigates the efficiency of the Celestine Blue dye removal from wastewater by electrocoagulation (EC) method using iron (Fe) electrodes through an electrolytic cell, followed by integrated separation of the flocculants from aqueous water using nylon 6,6 nanofiber membrane. Various operating parameters such as effect of the amount of electrolyte, voltage, amount of energy consumed, and kinetic studies have been studied on the dye removal efficiency of wastewater. Based on the results, the optimum condition that contributes to high dye removal efficiency of 43.21 % using moderate amount of energy are by using 0.8 g of sodium chloride (NaCl) as electrolyte and 1 V of voltage at constant pH of 7 and 10 ppm Celestine blue dye solution. Atomic absorption spectroscopy analysis is used to identify the traces of iron in the residual EC solution and it is confirmed that there?s no presence of iron. The dye removal rate is described well using second order kinetic model. Then, the result based on electrocoagulation-integrated membrane method shows superior performance compared to conventional method whereby additional 10 - 30 % of dye removed at 1 V and 2 V using similar energy consumption.