Ultrafast Cu2+ recovery from waste water by jet electrodeposition

As a clean treatment technology, electrodeposition has been widely investigated to remove and recover heavy metals from waste water. However, the applied current density is quite low due to relatively low concentration of heavy metal ions in waste water, which results in low processing rate and long processing time. In this paper, a facile jet electrodeposition method was applied for the removal of Cu2+ and recovery of Cu from dilute Cu2+ concentration wastewater (500 mg/L Cu2+). Ultrahigh current density of 12 A/dm(2) was applied by impinging the waste water from nozzle anode to cathode surface with an appropriate rate of 3 m/s. More than 97.4% of Cu2+ from waste water was removed with a satisfied current efficiency of 77.2%, the deposited Cu was in bulk state and can be directly recovered. In comparison, current density applied in conventional electrodeposition of such waste water can only reach 0.6 A/dm(2) with current efficiency of 76.3%. Considering nearly 20 times increasing of the Cu2+ recovery rate, our jet electrodeposition method makes it possible to remove Cu2+ and recover Cu from low Cu2+ concentration waste water with high rate and high efficiency.