Application of diffusion dialysis in separation of sulfuric acid and copper from electroplating wastewater

Electroplating industry creates large volumes of wastewater that contain acids and heavy metallic ions which are toxic but valuable. Diffusion dialysis (DD) can be used to separate acids from heavy metals. In this work, two single-cell DD modules equipped with Fumasep FAD membranes were used for the first time for the separation of sulfuric acid from copper. The first module consisted of a laboratory-scale DD unit operated in a batch configuration to study the effect of process parameters on the efficiency of sulfuric acid recovery. The latter one was a large-scale DD unit operated in a continuous configuration to simulate the process operation at the industrial scale. Results showed that Fumasep FAD was suitable to recover sulfuric acid separated from copper salt. In addition, a mathematical model was developed and validated with experimental data obtained in this work. A good agreement between experimental results and model was obtained both in batch and continuous operations.