Electrochemical Aspects of Electroosmotic Dewatering of Clay Suspensions

ABSTRACT

An attempt is made to elucidate the electrochemical aspects of the electroosmotic dewatering (EOD) of clays as reported in some recent work, especially that on interrupted DC power electroosmotic dewatering published by Rabie, Mujumdar and Weber (2). These authors showed that the dewatering by EOD stops after the DC power has been on for several minutes or hours; on interruption of their power and on short-circuiting of the electrodes, conditions can be created again for some further dewatering by DC power EOD. This discovery, of Rabie et al. is interpreted as a fuel cell effect and it is shown that it affords clues to several other electrochemical strategies for the possible enhancement of the efficiency of the EOD by DC power.

Further, the open circuit potentials observed by Rabie et al. (2) on the interruption of DC power are given an electrochemical interpretation which leads to quantitative estimates in agreement with the experimental values.