Waste treatment and metal recovery by Efftech.

[nickvc]

Well members I'm not employed by these guys but I know one of them so I promised to try and promote them and their systems to anyone who may be interested. Basically it's an electrolytic cell that can be used to reclaim metals, virtually all metals, cheaply, quickly and within government levels to allow legal and safe disposal of said solutions. I'm no expert on these systems but they seem to be the business if your dealing with volumes of waste solutions which can contain values and high levels of other metals which are deleterious to the environment and which are expensive to have disposed of properly.
Check them out at www.efftech.co.uk
If you want further details send them an e mail,don't ask me it's all too clever for me, make sure you mention that your members of the forum as I've told them you lot are too clever to have any rubbish thrown at them. Hopefully if they get interest the company chemists will join and be able to fully answer any questions here openly on the forum that members may have.
It's not for home refiners unfortunately as the cost is fairly high but maybe some of the professional members will either save money or reclaim further values if the volumes are big enough.
I hope this helps someone.

 

[Efftech]

Thanks for the intro Nick here's a little more info for any interested members.

RenoCell is the world’s most efficient and highest performance electrolytic cell, able to extract much smaller particles from a flowing liquid.

A metal-bearing process stream is electrolytically stripped of dissolved metal ions as it passes through a RenoCell. The metal ions are deposited as solid metal onto a specialized, high surface area carbon cathode. If valuable metals are being extracted these can be recovered using a furnace process to burn-off the cathode.

RenoCells are compact and modular, based on a unique technology that utilizes a patented three-dimensional cathode design, able to reduce metal concentrations in process and waste solutions to sub-ppm range.

The process has the added advantage of not creating hazardous sludges, which are extremely costly to dispose of. The efficiency of this technology allows very dilute sources of waste to be effectively processed. Please take a look at the attached PDF and don't hesitate to contact us for any further info.

 

[Lou]

Can it be used on nickel/cobalt chloride/sulfate solutions that would normally go for neutralization and filter pressing?

 

[Efftech]

Hi Lou
If the Nickel cobalt solutions have been prepared for electroplating purposes then RenoCell will recover both metals as an alloy. The sulphate formulations can be recovered in an undivided Cell but the chloride formulations would require a divided cell Both would require strict pH control around 4.2

Regards

Efftech

 

[Lou]

Is the system configured for scrubbing off gas?

 

[Efftech]

Yes the system can be configured to scrub gas. Often the system is modified to tie into existing gas recovery/ventilation systems but generally the system can be tailored suit most requirements.

 

[butcher]

Efftech,
I looked at the information on the website but did not learn a whole lot about these Reno cell units, from what I could gather they had some type of carbon membrane cathode, (possibly a carbon reduction filtering as well as the cathode reduction by electrolysis), I did not see much about the anode what it was and how it was located in the chamber, or how the solution flowed through the chamber retention time, DC current, flow rates, pressures...

 

[Palladium]

Lou when we was discussing formate reduction of silver the other day you mentioned the disposal issues involved with that process. Would the reduction of waste you were talking about work in this type of system?

 

[Efftech]

Please find attached additional information regarding RenoCell technology. Please get back to us if you require further information.

 

[Efftech]

Having just carried out a trial for a customer on a test solution of Aqua Regia using the Renocell system we thought the forum members would be interested in the results.

We were given a sample produced from e waste in Aqua Regia and were asked if we could remove the platinum content from 1500mg/l to as close to zero as possible , the solution had already had the gold precipitated out but on assay was still showing a gold content of 5mg/l.

We Ran the solution through the Renocell for a trial of 11 Hours and found we had taken the Platinum content down from 1500mg/l to 0.5mg/l and we also took the remaining gold from 5mg/l to <0.1mg/l.

So if you are having problems removing PGM’s or Gold from Aqua Regia or would simply like to make your current process more efficient please contact us for more info.

Regards

Efftech