Goethite as a more effective iron dosage source for mineralization of organic pollutants by electro-Fenton process

The electro-Fenton process is an electrochemical method for wastewater treatment based on the production of hydroxyl radicals via H2O2 generation in the presence of ferrous ions. The aim of this work is to show the use of a new mineral iron dosage source (goethite, α-FeOOH) for electro-Fenton process that achieves a more efficient mineralization treatment. Our new proposed Goethite catalyzed electro-Fenton (GEF) process yields 95% of mineralization for an organic model pollutant such as aniline under optimum standard electro-Fenton (SEF) conditions. For that, GEF process uses only 2 ppm of soluble iron, compared with the 55 ppm of soluble iron used by SEF process. In order to show the potential scope of GEF process, the effect of goethite concentration, solution conductivity, solution pH, temperature, and applied current density are studied in detail. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.