Assessment of the suitability of adsorption water treatment as a concentration process for resource recovery and wastewater treatment

Abstract

Electroplating plants dispose of the diluted plating solution (DPS) as plating wastewater due to its reduced plating efficiency. Solid waste produced by various industries is discarded in landfills, leading to the generation of landfill leachate (LL). Employing suitable wastewater treatments is crucial for either recovering valuable resources from wastewater or ensuring that its discharge aligns with wastewater discharge standards. In this study, we examined the feasibility of an adsorption water treatment (AWT) process for recovering valuable resources from DPS and efficiently treating LL. The AWT process using DPS and LL demonstrated that the influence of feed quality (composition and concentration) on water treatment capacity was insignificant, with a water recovery of up to 50 %. In addition, the AWT process demonstrated its ability to efficiently concentrate DPS without the need for pre-treatment, resulting in a notable 12.1 % increase in the plating efficiency of the DPS. This made it reusable for electroplating, and it was realized with a low specific energy consumption (SEC) of 1.63 kWh/m3 by utilizing waste heat in electroplating plants. Furthermore, the freshwater produced by the AWT process, including simple pre- and post-treatments, met 26 water quality parameters of the landfill leachate discharge standard.