Removal Characteristics of cobalt by Complexation with Humic Substances

It is well known that the membrane separation process combined with surfactant micelle (micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration) or polyelectrolyte (polyelectrolyte-enhanced ultrafiltration) can remove heavy metals effectively. However, the environmental hazard of surfactant or polyelectrolyte remained in effluent is a serious disadvantage of these methods. In this study, humic substances (HS) were used as complexing agents for metal removal instead of synthetic chemicals. The HS are a sort of natural organic matters which are biodegradable and abundant in natural environment. And the functional groups such as carboxyl groups and phenols in HS can bind with the cationic radionuclides and form complexes. Therefore separation process using them will be more environmental-friendly. The effects of concentration of HS and pH on the removal of cobalt were investigated. The ultrafiltration process was applied to the separation of the cobalt - HS complexes from the aqueous stream. At the concentration of > 3 g/L of HS and pH of 6, over 95 % of cobalt was removed by regenerated cellulose membrane of molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) 3,000. As the concentration of HS increased, the removal of cobalt also was improved because of increase in biding sites (functional groups). The cobalt removal increased from 72.5 % to 97.5 % when pH increased from 4 to 8 at the concentration of 3 g/L HS because of increase in HS solubility and cobalt hydroxide precipitation. In the presence of NaCl, the removal efficiency of cobalt decreased.