Reverse osmosis applied to metal finishing wastewater

Abstract

The electroplating industry is a great water consumer and, as a consequence, one of the biggest producers of liquid effluent. The metal finishing industry presents one of the most critical industrial waste problems. There is therefore growing interest in developing methods for reclaiming metals from plating waste stream and recovery of water using membrane technology [1,2]. The application of reverse osmosis (RO) to the global effluent from the electroplating industry has been studied in this paper. The results obtained show that there is 75–95% recovery of water and nearly total removal of metals in the permeate.