Recovery of copper from synthetic solution by efficient technology: Membrane separation with response surface methodology

Heavy metals are toxic in nature as declared by the World Health Organisation. Excess concentration of heavy metals causes harmful affect and alters the physicochemical characteristics of surrounding environmental parameters. Copper is an important heavy metal present in the aquatic environment, including wide industrial applications, and is an essential factor in animal metabolism. To recover and reduce copper concentration from aqueous medium an attempted has been made with membrane technology. In this research work ultra filtration, nano filtration and reserve osmosis have been used. At optimum conditions 4.49 g/L initial concentration, 0.72 m3/h inlet flow rate, 40 bar working pressure were obtained for maximum recovery (40.977 g/min) of copper at pH 6.8 with reverse osmosis. To achieve this, 27 experimental runs were developed according to central composite design and analysed. The value of R2 > 0.91 for the obtained quadratic model indicates the high correlation between observed or the experimental value of response and response value predicted by the mathematical model. This implies that the experimental data correlated very well with the quadratic model chosen for the analysis.