Process of removing heavy metal ions and solids suspended in micro-scale intensified by hydrocyclone

Abstract Hypertoxic heavy metal ions (HMIs) pollution in industrial wastewater is a serious threat to public health and environment safety. Facing to the complexity of the industrial wastewater, a novel Hydrocyclone Intensified Filtration and Adsorption (HIFA) technology was developed to deeply remove Cr(III) and microscale suspended solids (mSS) from the leather industry wastewater, simultaneously. An efficient HMI-adsorbent of EMAH, with the Cr(III) adsorption capacity of 43.14 mg g−1 and the adsorption rate constant of 1.82 g mg−1 min−1 was fabricated. After the individual optimization of the operating conditions, this HIFA technology exhibited a superior performance in the treatment of real tannery wastewater. that the mSS content decreased from 919 mg L−1 to below 30 mg L−1, and the Cr(III) concentration decreased from 147.4 mg L−1 to below 0.5 mg L−1. Meanwhile, the filtration medium was in-situ regenerated for the recycle-use and the adsorbents separation efficiency was greater than 97% for clean water production. Comparing with the existing chemical precipitate method, not only the excellent treatment results were achieved, but also its commercial advantages were far beyond, that the process procedure was simplified and shortened, more significantly, the operation costs of 65% reagent consumption, 70% energy consumption, and 83.3% total hazardous solid wastes were saved. Therefore, the proposed HIFA technology provided an environmentally sustainable approach and highlight the commercial value for the industrial wastewater treatment.