Electroplating Wastewater Treatment with RO Membrane

1) Project information:

Location: Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province

Project: Treatment of electroplating wastewater

Installation Date: NOV, 2019

2) Brief introduction

Electroplating-the use of chemical and electrochemical methods to plate various metals on the surface of metals or other materials. The quality of electroplating wastewater is complex, which contains heavy metal ions such as chromium, zinc, copper, nickel, and chromium, and toxic impurities such as acids, alkalis, and cyanides. If it is discharged directly without treatment, it will cause great pollution to surrounding water bodies.

At present, the treatment of electroplating wastewater has begun to enter the clean production process, total amount control and the stage of circular economy integration. Resource recycling and closed-circuit recycling are the mainstream directions of development. To achieve these mainstream directions, reverse osmosis membrane technology is needed.

The electroplating wastewater treatment methods used at this stage are mainly divided into seven categories:

(1) Chemical precipitation method is divided into neutralization precipitation method and sulfide precipitation method

(2) Redox treatment is divided into chemical reduction method, ferrite method and electrolysis method

(3) Solvent extraction separation method

(4) Adsorption method

(5) Membrane separation technology

(6) Ion exchange method

(7)Biological treatment technology, including biological flocculation,  biological adsorption, biochemical, and phytoremediation.

The use of reverse osmosis membrane technology to treat electroplating wastewater has great advantages over traditional treatment methods: the recovery rate of wastewater is high, the energy consumption in the production process is low, which reduces operating costs, and more is to ensure that the discharged water quality meets standards.

The water quality of electroplating wastewater that customers need to treat is as follows in Table 10.3

Table 10.3  Water quality indexes of electroplating wastewater

3）Treatment effect

Table 10.4 RO treatment effect Ⅰ

Table 10.5 RO treatment effect Ⅱ

The analysis concluded that after customers use HITON environmental protection reverse osmosis membrane elements, the treatment of electroplating wastewater has been significantly improved, with low operating costs, high benefits, easy management, no secondary pollution to the environment, and treatment wastewater can be recycled, Achieve zero emissions, which is conducive to the protection and improvement of the ecological environment:

(1) The RO process is used to treat the electroplating comprehensive wastewater after chemical precipitation, so that the organic matter and salt content of the wastewater is further reduced. Its turbidity, TSS, TDS and conductivity and other indicators meet customer requirements, and the water quality is stable, reliable.

(2) RO process treatment of electroplating wastewater is reused in the production process, which not only replaces the original pure water production line, saves energy consumption, but also reduces the amount of pollutant discharge and achieves good economic and environmental benefits.