Studies on the treatment of wastewater bearing cyanide and heavy metals by micelle enhanced ultrafiltration technique

Abstract
The objective of this investigation is to establish the rejection behavior of cyanide/heavy metals‐bearing waste water by micelle‐enhanced ultrafiltration(MEUF) technique. An extensive experimental investigation was conducted to characterize the removal of cyanide with and without cadmium by utilizing ultrafiltration(UF). The effects of experimental parameters such as solution pH, concentration of total cyanide and CNT/CdT molar ratio on rejections were examined as affected by the micelle concentration. The rejection dependence of the cyanide was found to be a function of pH and cyanide concentration. The rejection behavior of cyanide was explained in terms of species distribution model. For the co‐existence of Cd and CN in solution, the removal efficiencies of CNT and CdT was significantly affected by the chemical species of the given system. When pH was > 9 and CNT/CdT ratio was 2–6, the removal of CNT and CdT was over 90 and 99%, respectively. For all cases, the rejection of cyanide or cadmium was highly dependent on Cd‐CN complex species.