PRELIMINARY ENGINEERING: FILTRATION OF WASTEWATER FROM A ZINC POWDER ATOMIZING SYSTEM

ISSUE

Recycled water from the hydrometallurgy sector sometimes contains zinc particles that are detrimental to the zinc powder process downstream (gaskets, spray nozzles, high presure pumps, etc.). The idea was thus to protect those pieces of equipment by installing a filtration system for the wastewater coming from the hydrometallurgy sector. STS Canada got the contract for the selection of the most adequate and profitable filtration system that could be put in place.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

The system had to be robust, reliable and adapted to the physico-chemical properties of the wastewater to be treated. Also, validation steps done jointly with the client were extremely important for the final selection step. Amongst others, careful integration of the equipment to the existing process was critical to the project's success. It was thus primordial to properly identify the system's future location and to sketch out the general arrangements of the space that would house the equipment. Moreover, a prerequisite of these steps was the careful consideration of the impacts to and from the main process. Finally, STS had to explore automation and maintenance details for the recommended solution.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTION

The selection process was made up of three main parts. First, the wastewater's laboratory testing enabled STS to fill the System Considerations, an internal tool created to define a project's design criteria. This in turn was combined with a cooperation approach. Indeed, close partnership with the client’s personnel made it possible to cover all possible cases and therefore come up with a robust and customized solution.

RESULTS

The recommended solution included a fully automated pressure filter and rendered a filtrate clarity of < 5 ppm. This result made it possible to reintroduce the zinc particles into the process.