What Is Metal Recovery? Metal recovery involves wastewater storage, mixer tanks, and fabricated tanks are widely used by industrial water treatment installers and consultants to recover process metals from effluent to reuse. Methods such as drag out, evaporation, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, electrolytic recovery are processes that can effectively recover these metals from the effluent waste streams. Commonly recovered metals include Gold, Silver, Copper, Cyanide, Chromium, Zinc, Nickel, Lead, Cobalt, Manganese and Mercury
Dragout Recovery Process
Drag out recovery tanks are essentially rinse tanks which initially is filled with pure water and is a simple technology to recover plating chemicals used by metal finishers. It involves a process using drainboards, drip tanks and drag out tanks separately or in combination to capture plating chemicals. These chemicals are dragged out from parts being plated. As the plating line is operated, the drag-out rinse tank remains stagnant and its chemical concentration increases as more work are processed. Air agitation is often used to aid the rinsing process because there is no water flow within the tank to cause turbulence. Other technics including wetting agents are also helpful. Drainboards are suspended between the process tanks to capture plating solutions ad drip off the coated parts and back to the tanks. Drip tanks recover process chemicals by collecting dragout into an empty tank which is used to replenish the losses to the plating bath. The added water can help to offset evaporative losses from the process tank. Dragout chemicals are captured in a water solution, which is returned to the process tank as required. Usually, the value of the recovered chemicals is much greater than the increased energy cost associated with operating the bath at a higher temperature
Evaporative Recovery
Evaporative recovery is a widely used metal salt recovery technique in which in the evaporation process plating chemicals are concentrated by evaporating water. Evaporators may use heat or natural evaporation to remove water and are open tanks used to evaporate water. Under the right conditions, they can evaporate water from virtually any plating bath or rinse.
Reverse Osmosis
Reverse Osmosis recovers plating chemicals from rinse water by removing water molecules through a semi-permeable membrane allowing water to pass through but blocking metals and additives. A reverse osmosis system will work on most plating lines or baths as dilute or concentrated solutions are circulated through the membrane at pressures more than aqueous osmotic pressure. This results in the separation of water and metals or chemicals.
Electro Dialysis
Electrodialysis units recover plating chemicals differently from the other recovery units listed as electromotive forces selectively drive metal ions through an ion-selective membrane. These membranes are constructed from plastic with anionic or cationic characteristics. Alternative layers of anionic and cationic membranes are placed between two electrodes recovering by means of the electrolyte unit’s electrodes. This produces hydrogen and oxygen so positive ions travel to the negative terminal and negative ions travel to the positive terminal.
Enduramaxx Tanks For Metal Recovery
We have supplied the metal recovery process with a wide range of fabrications that includes plating and evaporation tanks, settling tanks and flocculation tanks. All our tanks and liners are bespoke and made to the customer’s requirements and can produce any shape or size you require in a variety of materials to suit your needs including Polypropylene, PVC and Polyethylene. In addition to this, we can supply provide any complimenting pipework features if necessary. One of the advantages of the large range of products is that if we don’t have a standard moulded tank we can custom-make tanks to suit your needs. Depending on the solution used, the concentration & temperature, we may need to discuss options that are best suited. We are available on 01778 562810 to discuss further.
