Despite their high toxicity, cyanide electrolytes are widely used by metal finishing industries due to the quality of metallic deposits obtained. At the Brazilian Mint, the process of copper electroplating onto carbon steel is used to make coins of one and five cents, generating, at the end, two types of wastewaters: one concentrated, after bleeding the contaminated electrolytes; and another diluted, after washing the disks electroplated with copper. In a previous work the possibility of electrolytically recovering copper and oxidizing part of the existing cyanide in the concentrated effluents was evaluated, reaching good results for the final concentration of copper and free cyanide starting with a solution containing 26g/L of copper and 27g/L of total cyanide. The present work aimed at testing in a bench scale an electrolytic cell for the treatment of diluted effluents, starting from a synthetic solution containing 200 mg/L of copper and 130 mg/L of free cyanide. Under flow conditions of 0.37mL/s at 50°C, the final concentrations of 0.7mg/L for copper and 0.08mg/L for free cyanide were obtained for an electric current of 1.5A, and less than 0.5mg/L for copper and 0.08mg/L for free cyanide were obtained for an electric current of 2A, after three hours of electrolysis.
copper; cyanide; electrowinning; effluent
