Bipolar Membrane Electrodialysis for Sulfate Recycling in the Metallurgical Industries.

Demand for nickel and cobalt sulfate is expected to increase due to the rapidly growing Li-battery industry needed for the electrification of automobiles. This has led to an increase in the production of sodium sulfate as a waste effluent that needs to be processed to meet discharge guidelines. Using bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPED), acids and bases can be effectively produced from corresponding salts found in these waste effluents.

Electrowinning of Iron from Spent Leaching Solutions Using Novel Anion Exchange Membranes.

In the Pyror process, electrowinning (EW) is used to recover acid and iron from spent leaching solutions (SLS), where a porous Terylene membrane acts as a separator between the cathode and anode. In this study, a novel anion exchange membrane (AEM)-based EW process is benchmarked against a process without and with a porous Terylene membrane by comparing the current efficiency, specific energy consumption (SEC), and sulfuric acid generation using an in-house constructed EW flow cell. Using an FAP-PK-130 commercial AEM, it was shown that the AEM-based process was more efficient than the traditional processes.