The Recovery of Hexavalent Chromium by Micellar Enhanced Ultrafiltration: Influence of Operating Conditions

The recovery of toxic metal compounds is a deep concern in all industrial countries. Hexavalent chromium is particularly worrying because of its toxic influence on human health. Actually the wastewater norm (0.1 g·m-3) is very strict and will become more severe in the near future.We present in this paper experimental results of Micellar Enhanced Ultrafiltration (MEUF) which is a suitable treatment for large volumes of effluents. A well known surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTABr) is used as complexing agent to remove the hexavalent chromium from wastewaters. As long as the feed concentration is less than or equal to 200 times the standard, more than 99 % of hexavalent chromium are retained and the permeate is satisfactory.