Closed-Loop Treatment of Electrolytic Nickel Rinse Water by Point-Of-Use Ion Exchange: A Case Study

摘要

Many recent pilot tests have demonstrated the benefits and cost effectiveness of point-of-use treatment technologies as opposed to centralized wastewater treatment for all sizes of plating facilities. A 9-month case study at a small plating facility in Cincinnati Ohio utilizing point-of- use ion exchange is described in this report. The principal constituents were tracked through the rinsing process for the electrolytic nickel lines. These results were used to develop simple mathematical tools that allow one to estimate the effectiveness of an existing rinsing station / ion exchange configuration and explore new options. We describe how these tools can be used to identify relationships between workload, rinsing station design, ion exchange system design, and temporal fluctuations in the mass loads handled by the point-of-use ion exchange system. This facility has recently switched from using an ion exchange service to a totally on-site system. The effectiveness, operational experience and costs associated with the each ion exchange approach are also presented. Dave Szlag is an environmental engineer with the U.S. EPA, National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has worked for EPA since 1994 and focused on adsorption and ion exchange technologies for pollution prevention. He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University, a M.S. in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado, at Boulder. Szlag is a registered professional engineer in Colorado.