Metal recovery

A new life for zinc and nickel

Present in numerous alloys, a large amount of zinc and nickel is found in industrial wastewater and discharge. The recovery of these metals is an ecological and economic challenge.
Veolia Environnement’s R&D and CEDILOR, a subsidiary of Veolia Environmental Services, joined forces with the University of Metz in order to develop a new process aimed at extracting these metals from industrial wastewater and discharge.

Depleted resources and a threatened environment

Zinc and nickel are heavy and polluting metals. Their discharge into the natural environment can have serious ecological consequences. Landfilling after stabilization is very costly and not a durably viable process. In addition, experts believe that exploitable nickel reserves will be exhausted within fifty years (thirty four or at best forty six years for zinc). This resource scarcity results in soaring metal prices.

An ideal partnership

In 1997, aware of the dual challenge of metal extraction, a chemical company contacted CEDILOR, a SARP Industries plant subsidiary of Veolia Environmental Services, with a project to recover 5,000 to 8,000 tons of wastewater discharged each year containing zinc and nickel.

In partnership with the University of Metz, CEDILOR launched a study aimed at reviewing the different techniques to separate the metals from very heterogeneous waste. At the same time, Veolia Environnement identified companies likely to use the recovered metals.

Transform sludge into gold

After two years’ research, a process was developed, by retention on a resin in a chloride medium followed by extraction in hydroxide form. After three years’ tests in a pre-industrial unit and the validation of economic parameters, it was developed on an industrial scale. Three patents were registered. Since then, Veolia Environnement has extracted 600 tons of metallic by-products each year from waste and wastewater.
This innovation has opened the door to research on the extraction of other metals.

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Pascal Muller Director of CEDILOR and at the time in charge of the “metal recovery” project at Veolia Environnement’s research center on waste management

“Zinc and nickel extracted from metallic wastewater can now be used to produce alloys and special steels as well as manufacture chemicals or catalytic systems. Their advantage over metal ores is that they can be directly reused in the industrial process without having to undergo refining operations, thereby saving time and sizeable energy resources, which is in line with Veolia’s sustainable development policy.”