Abstract
Copper is vital for human health in minute amounts, but rapid and excessive intake of it from drinking water can cause short-term gastrointestinal disturbance. Long-term exposure to copper higher than 1.3 ppm over many years can cause kidney and liver damage. People with Wilsons disease and children under one year of age are more sensitive to copper than others. For this reason, in 1991 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established rules for controlling copper levels in public water supplies. Copper has long been an USEPA priority pollutant and also is an important environmental concern because of its toxicity. In the present work, electrocoagulation technique has been used to remove copper from aqueous systems using iron sacrificial electrodes, and its analysis has been performed using a relatively new nano-band electrode system, whose working principle is anodic stripping voltammetry. We optimized this analytical technique for measurement copper in water samples. The influence of deposition potential, different supporting electrolytes and mercury plating time on nano-band iridium electrodes has been investigated. The floc produced by electrocoagulation has been characterized using XRD, SEM-EDS, Moessbauer, and FTIR.