An Innovative Electrogenerative Process for the Recovery and Removal of Metals from Industrial Effluents
Researchers: Associate Professor Norita Mohamed and Dr Hamzah Darus
Overview of System
- An electrochemical reactor operated in an eletrogenerative mode for the removal and recovery of metals at low concentrations
- A highly cost effective alternative to conventional wastewater treatment methods
- It does not require an external supply of energy
- The system can be made selective for particular metals from the choice of electrodes used
Recoverable/removable metal ions include copper, gold, hexavalent chromium, lead, nickel and silver
Benefits
- Does not require an external energy source
- cheap, selective and efficient system
- minimum attention for operation
- no need for sludge disposal
- reduced operating costs
- water can be recycled after treatment
- metal removal is possible 'at source' as well as 'end of pipe'
- requires little expertise on the part of the user
- applicable to a wide range of metal ion concentrations
Technical background
- It can be operated in various types of configurations: static batch reactor, single pass reactor, batch recycle reactor and multiple reactor.
- sustainable electrodes, separators and electrolytes are used
Examples of applications
- Hexavalent chromium can be reduced to trivalent chromium whlich is less toxic, achieving a final hexavalent chromium concentration below 0.05 ppm
- 74.2 ppm copper in an industrial wastewater sample is reduced to less than 1.0 ppm whilst recovering the copper metal
- More than 95% gold in metallic form can be recovered from an initial concentration of 500 ppm in 3 hours
Targeted industries
- Metal plating industries
- electronic industries
- mining and metal treatment industries
- photographic shops/printing industries
