Acids and metals recovery from spent pickling baths of stainless steels

Abstract

During the pickling of stainless steels around 300.000 m³/year of effluents from spent baths are produced in Europe. The usual treatment of these effluents by neutralisation and slurry disposal gives important disadvantages which are necessary to solve. A new process is being developed, called PIBARE, which shows a good future market in base of a preliminary technical-economical study for a plant of 10.000 m m³/year, where a pay-back period of two years is obtained. Furthermore, other environmental advantages are produced, as free and complex acids recycling and metals recovery as commercial by-products or recycled alloys. This article shows a general review of PIBARE project and the results obtained in the laboratory step which is been developed at the moment.