Treatment of Welding Electrode Manufacturing Plant Wastewater Using Coagulation/flocculation- Nanofiltration as a Hybrid Process

High water consumption and water scarcity make industrial wastewater reuse necessary, especially in those industries characterized by polluted effluents such as welding electrode manufacturing industries. The present paper investigates the coupling of coagulation-flocculation with nanofiltration (NF) to recycle water and reuse it in the process. First, the effect of different concentrations of a mixture of alum (Al2(SO4)3.18H2O) and ferric chloride (FeCl3) on the pretreatment process was closely studied. Then the NF process was applied for complementary treatment. The NF results show that, by increasing both flow rate and transmembrane pressure (TMP), permeate flux is increased. The NF results also show that the COD value decreases below 2 mg/l, TDS rejection approaches 82%, turbidity decreases below 1 NTU and the hardness is lower than the factory constraint (100 mg/l as CaCO3), allowing the reuse of the treated wastewater in the process.