Removing Silicon from Feed Water by Electrocoagulation for Power Plant Boiler

Power plant boilers are suffering from fouling, which causes not only economic loss but also serious security risks. Of different deposits, silicate scale has the smallest thermal conductivity and can interact with other scales to form more hard scales, especially in the high silicon content regions. Therefore, the removal of silicon was studied in the experiment by electrocoagulation process. The reverse-electrode method and no-reverse-electrode method were applied to study the silicon removal efficiency and electrical energy consumption in the flocculation process. The results showed that the reverse-electrode method could lead to a higher removal efficiency and lower power consumption. In addition, the better time interval was 10min for reversing electrodes. Then the overpotentials determined in reverse-electrode method and no-reverse-electrode method was 0.74 and 1.31V respectively which essentially explains why the former method had a better effect.