Reverse Osmosis Removal of Heavy Metals from Wastewater Effluents Using Biowaste Materials Pretreatment

摘要

The objective of this paper was to investigate the applicability of using biowaste materials prior to reverse osmosis treatment of water and wastewater effluents. The physico chemical properties of wheat bran, maize cob, and olive waste, and adsorption parameters such as metal concentration, adsorbent dose, contact time, and temperature of Cd(II) onto wheat bran are presented. The optimal parameters achieved in these experiment were used for sorptive removal of metal ions (Pb2+, Zn2+, Cd2+, Co2+, Mn2+, Ni2+) from synthetic aqueous solution as well as from wastewater effluents of the mining flotation process. At short pretreatment time, retentate of sufficient concentration was achieved with above biosorbents for further treatment. It is used as feed for reverse osmosis tests. The high removal efficiency of metal ions from synthetic as well as wastewater samples was obtained with low-pressure heterogeneous asymmetric reverse osmosis membranes almost completely by this process.