Competitive adsorption of pollutants from anodizing wastewaters to promote water reuse.

Anodizing wastewater contains principally phosphate (PO) anions according to previous studies, but with the purpose to promote water reuse in this type of industry, a complete characterization of wastewater was made to remove other anions and cations also present in significant concentration. Particularly, the adsorption of sodium (Na), potassium (K), fluoride (F), sulfate (SO) and phosphate (PO) was studied using different sorbents such as: coconut shell activated carbon, bone char, bituminous coal activated carbon, natural zeolite, silica, anionic and cationic exchange resins, a coated manganese-calcium zeolite, coconut shell activated carbon containing iron and iron hydroxide. All sorbents were characterized using FT-IR spectroscopy, potentiometric titration, nitrogen adsorption isotherms at 77 K, X-ray diffraction and SEM/EDX analysis to study the adsorption mechanism.

Adsorption of impurities from nickel-plating baths using commercial sorbents to reduce wastewater discharges.

The presence of moderate concentrations of impurities in the nickel-plating baths generates failures on the coated pieces. This situation entails the necessity of replacing the electroplating bath, which implies the generation of large volumes of wastewater with metallic species and high quantity of sludge. For this reason, the adsorption of the principal impurities of nickel-plating baths of an industry was analyzed in this work.