Copper- and Nickel-Recovery

Nickel and copper are widely used in the industries of printed circuit board, plating on plastics and general metal finishing. For several years, various technologies were being promoted to recover both nickel and copper at the source. Drag-Out rinses operate with electrolytic cells to recover the metal to be plated, which happens either on a reticulated or a spinning cathode. Also the recovery in barrel electrowinning systems has been considered as an alternative.
Other methods, such as producing a monohydroxide sludge of the base metal, have also been explored and implemented in the past. However, the worth of the metal that is recovered only reduces the costs of the sludge disposal, while one could obtain the real value of the waste metal produced by the plating operation.
enviolet has developed a stand-alone technology that addresses not only the issue of meeting low discharge limits, but also recovers copper and nickel with a metal purity of 99.99% and 99.5% respectively. The recovered metal requires no additional purification steps and can be sold on the open market to yield 95% of the LME value. Enviolet achieves this with a combination of segregated rinse techniques, high performance ion exchange technology and refinery based electrowinning processes that can recover between 50 and 500 kg daily of high purity copper and nickel.
The advantages are evident:
•    Added value through metal recovery
•    Less expenses for metal hydroxide sludge disposal
•    Positive life cycle assessment

Profitable Waste Treatment!