Background and Objectives: Cyanide is a toxic pollutant existing in the various industrial effluents such as iron and steel, coal mining, non-ferrous metals manufacturing and metal plating. Its presence in water resources and wastewater, as serious hazardous substances leads to undesirable effects on both the environment and human. Thus, its concentration control is essential for human health. The main goal of this study was to evaluate Fenton process efficiency in cyanide removal from aqueous solution.
Materials and Methods: This is an experimental study Conducted at Lab scale in a batch system. We investigated effect of different variables including; pH, mole ratio of Fe²⁺/ H₂O₂, contact time, and initial concentration of cyanide. Data were analyzed using Excel software.
Results: We found that cyanide with initial concentrations of 0.4 mM/L was reduced by 92 %. This removal result was related to oxidizing agent of hydroxyl radicals under optimum conditions including; pH = 4, molar ratio Fe²⁺/ H₂O₂= 0.046 (Fe²⁺=0.27 mM/L) after 6o min reaction time. An increase in reaction time was not improved cyanide removal efficiency. Moreover, the Fenton process efficiency in cyanide removal decreased from 92 to 60 %, by increasing the initial cyanide concentration from 0.4 to 0.6 mM/L.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that Fenton oxidation Process can be considered as a suitable alternative for cyanide removal to achieve environmental standards.