Abstract

Humic substances end up in water from the drainage basin causing eutrophication and the spread of algae. These natural organic substances have an influence on the physical, chemical and biological properties of the water system. Adsorption and electrocoagulation (EC) are commonly used purification methods in the water and wastewater treatment. Both methods are used by themselves for removing a wide range of impurities. In this research, the novelty was to study the effect of combined activated carbon (AC) adsorption and electrocoagulation method on the removal of organic substances as total organic carbon (TOC) from the peat solution. With the hybrid method, TOC content was efficiently removed (∼95%) by using first adsorption treatment followed by electrocoagulation with Al- or Fe -electrode. Instead, when using the adsorption and electrocoagulation separately, the removal of TOC was 79–89%. Based on this study, the hybrid method could be efficiently used for removing organic substances from the water system.