In many industrial processes, dilute aqueous solutions of heavy metals are formed as waste, byproduct, or intermediate streams. If released to the environment, the heavy metals contained in these streams become toxic pollutants, which cause detrimental biochemical effects in living organisms. This project will develop a new process for reducing the heavy metal ion concentration(s) in aqueous waste streams to environmentally tolerable levels. In previous work, a laboratory-scale magnetic field reactor was constructed and successfully applied to the removal of cadmium ions from a surrogate solution. Phase I will use this reactor to conduct experiments to evaluate the removal of a wider range of heavy metal contaminants from more complex and representative surrogate solutions containing different heavy metal ions. In these experiments, a range of surface functionalized magnetic particles of different size, ligand density, and adsorption-desorption capability will be examined. The results will define the capacity and selectivity of the process for specific metal ions and provide the design basis for a pilot-scale reactor, which will be constructed and demonstrated during Phase II.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The magnetic field reactor has the potential to reduce the capital and operating costs associated with scavenging trace concentrations of heavy metal ions from the wastewater produced by an extremely wide variety of industrial processes. Examples of these wastewater streams include effluents from mining and metallurgical processes, pesticide manufacturing, metal plating operations, chemical processes, and energy-related (coal and nuclear power) operations
