Experimental Aspects of Scaling Control in Membrane Filtration of Mine Water

Hanna Kyllönen*, Antti Grönroos, Eliisa Järvelä, Juha Heikkinen, Chuyang Tang

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This study focused on membrane filtration of neutralized pond water, which may be necessary when good quality water is required for hydrometallurgical processes. Neutralized mine water can still have fairly high metal and sulphate levels, which can hinder discharge and reuse possibilities. Both nanofiltration and reverse osmosis are effective in removing metals and sulphate, but scaling can be a severe problem. Microfiltration as a pre-treatment method, although meant for particle removal, seemed to decrease the amount of scalants, thus delayed scaling on the membrane surface and increasing water recovery for both nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. It is possible that the presence of particles in the feed water promoted crystal growth in the turbulent flow and caused the removal of dissolved constituents. Alternatively, supersaturation could have occurred, allowing microfiltration to remove the scalants as particles. The Liqum sensor indicated that redox values started to increase again just before scaling began due to precipitation in the supersaturated membrane concentrate solution. Thus, the sensor seemed to provide real time, in-situ, early-stage scaling warning.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)193-198
    JournalMine Water and the Environment
    Volume36
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2017
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    Tekes, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Outotec, Sofi Filtration, Pöyry, and Liqum are all acknowledged for their financial support of the project.

    Keywords

    • microfiltration
    • nanofiltration
    • neutralizing pond water
    • real-time measurements
    • reverse osmosis
    • scaling

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