Industrial Waste Treatment by ETS-10 Ion Exchanger Material

The aim of this project was to study the treatment of industrial waste using ETS-10 zeolite. The pollutants that must be removed were metals sourced from zinc ferrite, a processing waste derived from the use of mineral-containing zinc. The first phase of the work involved the characterization of the industrial waste, zinc ferrite, in order to deepen the knowledge regarding its nature and composition. The second phase involved the removal of the metals released by the zinc ferrite in aqueous systems using the ETS-10 phase as an ion exchanger. Different chemical and physical techniques were used: plasma mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, microanalysis, and thermal analyses. A comparison between ETS-10 and commercial zeolite A performance, in the same aqueous systems, was carried out. The results showed that the metal removal efficiency of ETS-10 phase is higher than that obtained by commercial zeolite A, especially towards dangerous heavy metals such as Pb, Zn and Mn.