THE USE OF GLAUCONITE IN THE PROCESS OF DEMETALLIZATION OF FLOTATION EFFLUENTS

Abstract

One of the promising areas of the problem of wastewater treatment, containing heavy metals is the use of environmentally friendly sorbents of natural origin, in particular clay materials with selective sorption properties.Taking into account the factor of environmental technological benefits, the sorption properties of glauconite (green clay) located in the Garni district of  Republic of Armenia and the possibility of its use in the process of desalination of flotation effluents formed during the processing of the Teghut copper-molybdenum mineral were investigated. The study of the patterns of sorption of glauconite was carried out based on the results of sorption studies of iron and molybdenum ions present in flotation waters.

The analysis of experimental results showed that the efficiency of sorption of iron and molybdenum ions from mixtures with different and equal contents with 2 g of glauconite decreases depending on a certain quantitative ratio. This phenomenon can most likely be explained by the ion-exchange ability of glauconite. The mineralogical composition of flotation water mainly contains metal ions Cu, Fe, Zn, Ca, Mo, Mg. It has been established that since other components present in the mixture can participate in the ion exchange process, therefore, the study of the sorption capacity in the case of using glauconite of a larger mass can ensure high efficiency of sorption of these ions in the mixture.

The regularities of sorption and desorption of metals under static conditions were studied to determine the optimal process conditions, glauconite was studied as a sorbent in the process of extracting metal ions (iron, molybdenum) from industrial effluents. Regeneration of glauconite saturated with iron (III) and molybdenum (VI) ions was carried out under dynamic conditions. The technological scheme of demetallization of flotation effluents is proposed. It is shown that, if necessary, the proposed technological scheme can also be applied in the technology of demetallization of flotation effluents formed in various ore dressing processes.