tailieunhanh - Handbook Of Pollution Control And Waste Minimization - Chapter 11

11 Novel Materials and Processes for Pollution Control in the Mining Industry Alan Fuchs and Shuo Peng University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada Tremendous opportunities exist in the area of novel materials for environmental engineering applications. These opportunities have traditionally been in the areas of membranes, ion exchange, and adsorbents, but new areas relating to technological advances in “nanomaterials” and “bio-applications” have spawned new generations of designed materials for many pollution control applications. The emphasis in this chapter will be on new technologies which have been or will be useful for pollution control in the mining industry. This will require a review of developments. | 11 Novel Materials and Processes for Pollution Control in the Mining Industry Alan Fuchs and Shuo Peng University of Nevada Reno Reno Nevada Tremendous opportunities exist in the area of novel materials for environmental engineering applications. These opportunities have traditionally been in the areas of membranes ion exchange and adsorbents but new areas relating to technological advances in nanomaterials and bio-applications have spawned new generations of designed materials for many pollution control applications. The emphasis in this chapter will be on new technologies which have been or will be useful for pollution control in the mining industry. This will require a review of developments in the general areas of membranes ion exchange and adsorption and discussion of how these materials are useful in mining applications. 1 MEMBRANES MATERIALS AND PROCESSES A great deal of work has been done on the use of membrane processes for treatment of mine waters. Some of the typical membrane configurations of membranes separators are shown in varied textbooks . Ref. 1 . This text also has examples of hollow fiber membranes and typical flow arrangements of these systems. Recent examples of this include separation of rare earths using liquid membranes 2 and copper recovery from Chilean mine waters also using Copyright 2002 by Marcel Dekker Inc. All Rights Reserved. liquid membranes 3 . Earlier studies in this area related to the removal of ammonium and nitrate ions from mine effluents using nanofiltration and reverse osmosis 4 5 . A major focus in the area of membrane development during the past few years has been in the use of liquid membranes. Valenzuela et al. 3 describe the use of a hollow fiber-supported liquid membrane for the recovery and concentration of copper from Chilean mine water. This system works by impregnating the porous structure of the membrane with an organic film which acts as a selective extraction medium. The film is salicylaldoximic extractant.