Vanadium removal and recovery from liquid waste streams

Vanadium is an important and strategic metal that has been widely used in many technological fields. Its consumption has significantly increased during recent decades. Therefore, primary resources are considered insufficient to satisfy demand and many countries are looking for alternative resources for vanadium production. At the same time, the over-limit discharge of vanadium into water systems has raised concerns.

This work deals with vanadium removal and recovery from liquid waste streams. In the current study, novel sorbents were developed for vanadium removal from water and evaluated for vanadium sorption from mining-influenced water using different iron-based products in both batch and column mode. A pilot-scale field study was conducted at a closed mine site to remove vanadium from mining-influenced water using ferric oxyhydroxide sorbent (CFH-12). The possibility of recovering vanadium from used CFH-12 was investigated by a two-step process including the release of vanadium from used sorbent and precipitation it.

The developed novel sorbents, iron-modified peat and quaternized pine bark, effectively removed vanadium from synthetic solutions. The maximum vanadium sorption capacity of iron-modified peat and quaternized pine bark was 16.3 mg/g and 34.3 mg/g, respectively. In the case of mining-influenced water, the lab-scale results revealed that vanadium can be efficiently removed by iron sorbents in both batch and column mode. The pilot study at the mine site confirmed that filter systems placed in different streams were capable of capturing vanadium from the vanadium-polluted streams. More importantly, vanadium could be successfully recovered from the spent sorbent (CFH-12) collected from the pilot study, which provides valuable information for vanadium production from alternative resources.