Treatment of printed circuit board wastewater containing copper and nickel ions by fluidized-bed homogeneous granulation process

Abstract

In this study, treatment of synthetic printed circuit board wastewater containing copper and nickel ions was done through fluidized-bed homogeneous granulation process (FBHGP). The treatment occurred in a single reactor, removing and granulating both copper and nickel ions at the same period of time. The effect of total carbonate loading (10, 12, 15, 17, 20 mM) on the treatment of Cu2+ (6.3 mM) and Ni2+ (3.4 mM) was evaluated in this study with initial precipitant flow rate of 15 mL/min and initial operating pH of 6.5 and shifted to 8.5 pH on the given period of time. The synthetic wastewater containing copper and nickel ions had better result in terms of size of recovered granules, removal and granulation efficiencies when 17 mM of CO3 was employed in the system, resulting to copper removal of 97.5%, copper granulation of 93.1% and nickel removal and granulation efficiencies of 81.2 and 73.6%, respectively. The granules recovered were >0.42 mm in size with rough surface and EDX analysis identified the presence of oxygen, copper and nickel.