Calvin Jose Jol

Water scarcity is a major problem in some coastal rural areas in Sarawak, Malaysia. In Sarawak, the Borneo tropical brackish peat water source is abundantly available in most coastal rural areas especially in the palm oil plantation regions but, currently, it is underutilized as a source for water treatment plant. As such, this study aims to determine the feasibility of continuous electrocoagulation treatment with aluminium electrodes to treat Borneo tropical brackish peat water from palm oil plantation region for domestic water consumption in coastal rural areas.Subsequently, this study has found that high pollutants removal efficiency is achieved at 5 minutes of residence time where most of final pollutants levels in the treated water meet the recommended standard limits in NWQS. From the energy operating cost analysis conducted, the operating cost for electrocoagulation treatment of brackish peat water for the highest pollutants removal efficiency is at Ringgit Malaysia (RM) 0.12 or United States Dollars (USD) 0.03 per cubic meter of brackish peat water treated. The SEM and EDX analysis have revealed the presence elementals group such as carbon, silica, sodium, sulphate, magnesium, chloride, and calcium on the flocs surface. The study also noticed the presence of ytterbium in which indicates that the brackish peat water source contains rare earth element that could be extracted with adsorption process. Overall, the study has demonstrated that adsorption process in continuous electrocoagulation treatment is feasible to reduce the pollutants level from Borneo tropical brackish peat water in which compliance to the NWQS at reasonable cost.