Valorisation of industrial brines into value-added products (acids and bases) through selectrodialysis and bipolar membrane electrodialysis: A step towards circular economy approach

Valorisation of industrial brines into value-added products (acids and bases) through selectrodialysis and bipolar membrane electrodialysis: A step towards circular economy approach

5^th International Conference on Recycling & Waste Management
March 05-06, 2018 | London, UK

Oriol Gibert Monica Reig, Cesar Valderrama, Jose Luis Cortina

Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain CETaqua, Spain

Posters & Accepted Abstracts : Environ Waste Management and Recycling

Abstract:

High salinity waste water effluents originated from different industrial processes are normally considered as last-resort sources because their high contents of ions make necessary the use of complex and costly treatment systems. For this reason, generated brines have traditionally been discharged into natural water bodies, although this method is not environmentally friendly and represents a loss of potential resources (salts and water). Undoubtedly the selective recovery and revalorisation of salts contained in brines would permit their reusability as well as a reduction of the environmental impact caused by their disposal, contributing to the development of circular economy. Within this framework, the present study intended to treat an industrial brine rich in NaCl and Na2SO4 through a combination of membrane-based technologies to convert its ions into valuable chemical products. The involved technologies consisted in 1) electrodialysis (SED) to separate NaCl from Na2SO4, and 2) electrodyalisis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) to produce HCl and NaOH from NaCl, and H2SO4 and NaOH from Na2SO4. Experiments were performed under different Cl- and SO42- concentrations in feed solution and carrier solutions to be enriched in Cl- and SO42-. Results indicated that it was possible to separate Clâ and SO42â by SED (purities up to 98%) and to produce pure NaOH and HCl and H2SO4 by EDBM. Optimal operation conditions were also determined with regard to energy consumption

Biography:

Oriol Gibert is an environmental chemist at Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) with more than 10 year’s experience in the field of contaminated land and groundwater and of process separation (adsorption, membranes) applied to water treatment. He has 50 ISI-indexed publications and his publication H-index is 18.
Email: oriol.gibert@upc.edu

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