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Adsorption materials and technologies in heavy metal wastewater treatment
Functional fibers absorb heavy metals and deeply purify and recycle wastewater.
Type
Material
Tags
Environmental & resource tech
Energy utilization
Wastewater treatment
Nonferrous heavy metal smelting method
Solution maturity
Mass promotion / Mass production
Applicable industry
Water pollution control
Applications
Wastewater treatment
Key innovations
The new adsorbent material adopts grafting technology, which is highly targeted, can efficiently remove and recover heavy metals, and can be recycled and reused. It is flexible in application and is significant in innovation.
Potential economic benefits
This technology can recycle expensive heavy metals to create revenue, recycle materials and significantly reduce operating costs, and help companies meet standards and avoid high fines.
Potential climate benefits
Recovering heavy metals can avoid high-energy-consuming primary mineral mining and smelting and reduce carbon emissions. Adsorbent regeneration reduces energy consumption in the production of new materials.
Solution supplier
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Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, focuses on the application of nuclear science and advanced accelerator technology to serve national strategic needs such as nuclear energy and materials science.
Shanghai,China
Solution details

Wastewater emissions are large and treatment costs are high. Among them, adsorption technology is one of the important methods for purification and treatment of heavy metals. Heavy metal wastewater mainly comes from machining, mining, steel and non-ferrous metal smelting, electroplating wastewater, and electronics factory wastewater (especially PCB board factories. Etching wastewater) and battery production wastewater, etc. Heavy metal wastewater pollution has the characteristics of long-term toxicity and non-biodegradable. It can enter the human body through the food chain and accumulate in the human body, leading to various diseases and dysfunction, and ultimately causing serious harm to human health. Traditional treatment methods for heavy metal wastewater include chemical precipitation method, electrochemical method, adsorption method and membrane separation method. Since heavy metals are expensive, the recovery and reuse of heavy metals must be considered during the treatment of heavy metal wastewater. The adsorption method can meet the requirements of removing and reusing precious and heavy metals at the same time. Through grafting technology, functional fiber adsorbent materials with different properties can be designed for different target pollutants. The test data and application cases of this new adsorbent material show that different target ions are highly correlated with the environment they are located in. For convenience of calculation, a static adsorption method is used to calculate, and the static time is 24 hours. The sewage volume and adsorption material are tested individually. Application case: After traditional treatment, the pH value of wastewater from an electroplating factory is about 4, and the concentration of cadmium (Cd) is about 0.2 ppm, which still does not meet the emission standard. After being treated with new adsorbent materials, the data are as follows: Sample development of this technology has been completed, and a demonstration device is planned to be built. It is planned to build a set of demonstration sites for the advanced treatment of electroplating wastewater. The material is fixed in an adsorption column with a diameter of about 10 cm in a packed manner, and the fiber filling amount is about 1 L (0.9 kg). Wastewater passes through the adsorbent material at a flow rate of 0.2-1 m3 per hour. In order to meet emission needs, adsorption columns can be connected in parallel; in order to achieve treatment depth, adsorption columns can be connected in series. After the adsorption is completed, the material is regenerated by simple acid cleaning and reused. The team hopes to carry out technical cooperation development with partners and cooperate with companies with conditions to implement technology equity.

Last updated
22:44:17, Nov 04, 2025
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