Recovery of nickel in the form of Ni(OH)2 from plating wastewater containing Ni-EDTA using bipolar membrane electrodialysis

Ni is often present in plating wastewater as a complexing state. It is difficult to remove this Ni using traditional chemical precipitation technology. In this study, a bipolar membrane electrodialysis system was used to recover Ni in the form of Ni(OH)(2) from plating wastewater containing Ni-ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (Ni-EDTA) without adding chemical reagents. The stable structure of Ni-EDTA can be destroyed by H+ produced by the bipolar membrane to obtain free Ni2+, which can combine with OH produced by the bipolar membrane to form Ni(OH)(2). When the electrolyte Na2SO4 concentration, current density and initial Ni-EDTA concentration were 0.2 mol/L, 16 mA/cm(2) and 1000 mg/L, respectively, 99.0% of Ni-EDTA was removed after 32 h. When the system was used to treat actual plating wastewater, 92.1% of Ni-EDTA was removed and 88.7% was recovered. When the number of wastewater compartments in the system was increased from one to three, the current efficiency increased from 1.7% to 5.8%, and the specific energy consumption decreased from 0.39 to 0.19 kW h/g. The results of an X-ray diffraction study indicate that the Ni(OH) 2 obtained in this study is similar to commercial Ni(OH)(2). Moreover, the recovery mechanism of Ni-EDTA was analysed. Thus, bipolar membrane electrodialysis can be regarded as an effective method to recover Ni from wastewater containing Ni-EDTA.

Automated summary

In this study, a bipolar membrane electrodialysis system was used to recover Ni in the form of Ni(OH)2 from plating wastewater without adding chemical reagents. The stable structure of Ni-EDTA can be destroyed to obtain free Ni2+ and combine with OH to form Ni(OH)2. The system showed high removal and recovery efficiency for Ni-EDTA in both synthetic and real wastewater samples.