Mine Water Treatment by Membrane Filtration Processes - Upscale Experiments

The worlds' diminishing water resources together with stricter environmental legislation lead to the development of new technologies for the treatment of water for mining activities. In arid and remote mining areas a promising approach is the integration of membrane technology into state of the art mine water treatment processes. Reverse Osmosis (RO) as well as the lower pressure nanofiltration (NF) may be suitable operations to be considered. Recently an NF membrane identified in previous tests was subject to further investigation in two upscale modules. The acidic water, containing sulphate and a variety of metals, was fed into a disc- and a Spacer Tube® spiral wound module in recycle mode. The setup was tested at different working points over 145 h for each run. The results show applicability of NF for desalination of AMD under the mentioned conditions. No visible drop in permeate flux was observed, although some scaling occurred.