• Resources Recycling
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.61-66
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• 2015

Cyanidation has been used worldwide to recover gold from primary ore or concentrate. The use of cyanide is however becoming an emerging issue because of the toxic residue and wastewater made from the process. The cyanide-containing wastewater should be treated properly, obeying the environmental standard and regulations. In the present article, the domestic and international uses, regulations, and treatment technologies of cyanide in gold mining were investigated as a feasibility study to develop a cyanide treatment process as well as the cyanidation process. A biological cyanide treatment process to develop a zeroemission gold recovery and wastewater treatment process was also briefly introduced.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.572-578
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• 2013

Azotobacter vinelandii, a strict aerobic nitrogen-fixing bacterium, has been extensively studied with regard to the ability of $N_2$-fixation due to its high expression of nitrogenase and fast growth. Because nitrogenase can also reduce cyanide to ammonia and methane, cyanide degradation by A. vinelandii has been studied for the application in the bioremediation of cyanide-contaminated wastewater. Cyanide degradation by A. vinelandii in NFS (nitrogen-free sucrose) medium was examined in terms of cell growth and cyanide reduction, and the results were applied for cyanide-contaminated cassava mill wastewater. From the NFS medium study in the 300 ml flask, it was found that A. vinelandii in the early stationary growth phase could reduce cyanide more rapidly than the cells in the exponential growth phase, and 84.4% of cyanide was degraded in 66 h incubation upon addition of 3.0 mM of NaCN. The resting cells of A. vinelandii could also reduce cyanide concentration by 90.4% with 3.0 mM of NaCN in the large-scale (3 L) fermentation with the same incubation time. Finally, the optimized conditions were applied to the cassava mill wastewater bioremediation, and A. vinelandii was able to reduce the cyanide concentration by 69.7% after 66 h in the cassava mill wastewater containing 4.0 mM of NaCN in the 3 L fermenter. Related to cyanide degradation in the cassava mill wastewater, nitrogenase was the responsible enzyme, which was confirmed by methane production. These findings would be helpful to design a practical bioremediation system for the treatment of cyanide-contaminated wastewater.

• Clean Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.168-173
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• 2021

The treatment of plated wastewater is subject to various and complex processes depending on the pH, heavy metal, and cyanide content of the wastewater. Alkali chlorine treatment using NaOCl is commonly used for cyanide treatment. However, if ammonia and cyanide are present simultaneously, NaOCl is consumed excessively to treat ammonia. To solve this problem, this study investigated 1) the consumption of NaOCl according to ammonia concentration in the alkaline chlorine method and 2) whether ferrate (VI) could selectively treat the cyanide. Experiments using simulated wastewater showed that the higher the ammonia concentration, the lower the cyanide removal rate, and the linear increase in NaOCl consumption according to the ammonia concentration. Removal of cyanide using ferrate (VI) confirmed the removal of cyanide regardless of ammonia concentration. Moreover, the removal rate of ammonia was low, so it was confirmed that the ferrate (VI) selectively eliminated the cyanide. The cyanide removal efficiency of ferrate (VI) was higher with lower pH and showed more than 99% regardless of the ferrate (VI) injection amount. The actual application to plated wastewater showed a high removal ratio of over 99% when the input mole ratio of ferrate (VI) and cyanide was 1:1, consistent with the molarity of the stoichiometry reaction method, which selectively removes cyanide from actual wastewater containing ammonia and other pollutants like the result of simulated wastewater.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.979-983
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• 2009

The mean pH of wastewater discharged from the plating process is 2, so a less amount of alkali is required to raise pH 2 to 5. In addition, if sodium sulfite is used to raise pH 5 to 9 in the secondary treatment, caustic soda or slaked lime is not necessary or only a small amount is necessary because sodium sulfite is alkali. Thus, it is considered desirable to use only $FeSO_4{\cdot}7H_2O$ in the primary treatment. At that time, the free cyanide removal rate was highest as around 99.3%, and among heavy metals, Ni showed the highest removal rate as around 92%, but zinc and chrome showed a low removal rate. In addition, the optimal amount of $FeSO_4{\cdot}7H_2O$ was 0.3g/L, at which the cyanide removal rate was highest. Besides, the free cyanide removal rate was highest when pH value was 5. Of cyanide removed in the primary treatment, the largest part was removed through the precipitation of ferric ferrocyanide: $[Fe_4(Fe(CN)_6]_3$, and the rest was precipitated and removed through the production of $Cu_2[Fe(CN)_6]$, $Ni_2[Fe(CN)_6]$, CuCN, etc. Furthermore, it appeared more effective in removing residual cyanide in wastewater to mix $Na_2SO_3$ and $Na_2S_2O_5$ at an optimal ratio and put the mixture than to put them separately, and the optimal weight ratio of $Na_2SO_3$ to $Na_2S_2O_5$ was 1:2, at which the oxidative decomposition of residual cyanide was the most active. However, further research is required on the simultaneous removal of heavy metals such as chrome and zinc.

• 한국전기화학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.43-43
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• 1998

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.85-92
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• 1998

In this study, the electrolytic treatment by one-stage electrolysis was investigated for electroplating wastewater containing $Cr^{6+}$ and $CN^{-}$. From the results, we concluded as follows : Optimum initial pH of wastewater was pH : 3. Amount of optimum addition of electroltyte(NaCl) was 0.1 wt%. Optimum potential for electrolysis was 5 volt. Concentration and removal efficiency for $Cr^{6+}$ and $CN^{-}$ were under 1 mg/L and above 99% at optimum conditions. And the feasibility of electrolytic treatment for electroplating wastewater containing $Cr^{6+}$ and $CN^{-}$ was certified.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.687-690
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• 2010

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of aldehyde compounds and ploysulfide as accelerating agents on removal of heavy metals and CN in plating wastewater. As a results of the experiments, the removal efficiency of cyanide using the formaldehyde type of aldehydes was the highest at pH 9. Next types were sodium formaldehyde bisulfite addut> paraldehyde> paraformaldehyde. Also, optimum pH and dosage for treating the residual heavy metals by using polysulfide were pH 9 and 30 mg/L, respectively. The removal efficiencies of cyanide, chromium, zinc and copper were above 96.7% at optimum condition.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.292-297
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• 2014

We synthesized the self-organized nanoporous oxide with potentiostatic anodization of iron foil. The iron oxide nanocomposite (INCs) were fabricated in 1M $Na_2SO_4$ containing 0.5wt% NaF electrolyte holding the potential at 20, 40 and 60 V for 20min, respectively. Field Emmision Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) were used to evaluate the micromorphology and crystalline structure of INC film. Also, this study was performed to evaluate the fenton reaction using INC film with hydroperoxide for degradation of cyanide dissolved in water. In case of INC-40V in the presence of $H_2O_2$ 3%, the first-order rate constant was found to be $1.7{\times}10^{-2}min^{-1}$, and indicated to be $1.2{\times}10^{-2}min^{-1}$ on commercial hematite powder. This result is shown to be good performance enough to replace the powder type for treatment of wastewater.