Cavitation-Dispersion Method for Copper Cementation from Wastewater by Iron Powder
Metals 2018
Andrejs Šiškins, Viktors Mironovs, Hong Vu, Pavel Novak, Jānis Baroniņš, Aleksandr Polyakov, Jurijs Ozoliņš

The circular economy for sustainable economic deployment is strongly based on the re-use of secondary products and waste utilization. In the present study, a new effective cementation method for recovering valuable metallic copper from industrial wastewater using Fe0 powders is reported. A high-speed mixer-disperser (HSMD) capable of providing a cavitation effect was used for the rapid intake, dispersion, and mixing of Fe0 powder in an acidic wastewater solution (pH  2.9) containing copper ions mainly in the form of CuSO4. Three iron powders/particles were tested as the cementation agent: particles collected from industrial dust filters (CMS), water-atomized iron-based powder HC100.29, and sponge-iron powder NC100.24. The effects of mixing regimes and related mixing conditions on the effectiveness of the Cu cementation process were evaluated by comparison between the HSMD and a laboratory paddle mixer. It was observed that the use of cavitation provided more efficient copper removal during the copper cementation process in comparison to the standard experiments with the propeller mixer. Under the cavitation regime, about 90% of copper was cemented in the first five minutes and the final copper removal of 95% was achieved using all three Fe0 powders after seven minutes of cementation. In comparison, only around 55% of copper was cemented in the first seven minutes of cementation using the traditional mixing method.


Keywords
cementation, copper removal, cavitation
DOI
10.3390/met8110920
Hyperlink
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4701/8/11/920

Šiškins, A., Mironovs, V., Vu, H., Novak, P., Baroniņš, J., Polyakov, A., Ozoliņš, J. Cavitation-Dispersion Method for Copper Cementation from Wastewater by Iron Powder. Metals, 2018, Vol. 8, No. 11, pp.1-11. ISSN 2075-4701. Available from: doi:10.3390/met8110920

Publication language
English (en)
The Scientific Library of the Riga Technical University.
E-mail: uzzinas@rtu.lv; Phone: +371 28399196