Recovery of copper from the effluents of PCB plant

Attempts have been made to recover copper as metal from the wastes containing copper instead of its salts using existing effluent treatment plant and filter press, i.e., without any alternation in the design of the plant. In this process of recovery, wastes generated at various outlets are interacted with other polluting effluent using formaldehyde as reducing agent to recover copper as metal. The recovery of copper has been made by the involvement of minimum skill using the same infrastructure provided by the industry and with minimum use of chemicals. Efficiency of the method of recovery is about 98 per cent. In this process, all the sources having copper are reacted simultaneously irrespective of their acidic or alkaline,nature to recover copper as metal. And, copper is recovered as copper metal rather than its salts and thus has higher sale value.