%0 Journal Article %T DEFLUORIDATION OF DRINKING WATER BY ELECTROCOAGULATION/ELECTROFLOTATION - KINETIC STUDY %A Bennajah Mounir %A Mostafa Maalmi %A Yassine Darmane %A Mohammed Ebn Touhami %J Journal of Urban and Environmental Engineering %D 2010 %I University of Paraiba %X A variable order kinetic (VOK) model derived from the langmuir-freundlish equation was applied to determine the kinetics of fluoride removal reaction by electrocoagulation (EC). Synthetic solutions were employed to elucidate the effects of the initial fluoride concentration, the applied current and the initial acidity on the simulation results of the model. The proposed model successfully describes the fluoride removal in Airlift reactor in comparison with the experimental results. In this study two EC cells with the same capacity (V = 20 L) were used to carry out fluoride removal with aluminum electrodes, the first is a stirred tank reactor (STR) the second is an airlift reactor (ALR). The comparison of energy consumption demonstrates that the (ALR) is advantageous for carrying out the defluoridation removal process. %K defluoridation %K electrocoagulation %K variable order kinetics %K stirred tank reactor %K kinetics modeling %U http://dx.doi.org/10.4090/juee.2010.v4n1.037045