Membrane technology has also become attractive for the
treatment and recycling of wastewater in metal finishing industries
as it is highly effective, easy to operate, and compatible with other
treatment processes. Therefore, there is a growing interest in.
developing membrane technologies for reclaiming metals from
plating waste-streams. So far, studies have mostly focused on
recovering specific components. Spatz (1972) and Kamizawa et al.
(1978) reported a method for recovering gold and rinsing water
within an electroplating process using a RO membrane. Kremen
et al. (1977) treated wastewater containing copper. zinc and chromium
from metal finishing utilising a RO process together with
precipitation resulting in water recovery of 95%. Sato et al. (1977)
reported an integrated RO system for reclaiming wastewater. Containing
cyanide and chromium from an electroplating operation.
They found that the pie-treatment before the RO plant was difficult
due to fluctuations in raw wastewater quality. Chai et al. (1997)
conducted a pilot study for treating electroplating wastewater
containing copper by RO. They showed that by increasing the
transmembrane pressure difference, metal concentrations within
the treated wastewater could be further reduced and that the RO
process could also be effective for large scale operations.
Mohammad et al. (2004) successfully separated 〖Ni〗^(2+) ions from Na+
using negatively charged NF membranes for nickel phosphorus
(Ni-P) electroless plating wastewater. Csefalvay et al. (2009)
demonstrated copper rejection of NF and RO membranes.