Recovery of nano-Al₂O₃ from waste aluminum electrolytic solution generated during the manufacturing of capacitors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a resource recovery procedure for recovering nano-Al₂O₃ from the waste aluminum electrolytic solution generated during the manufacturing of capacitors. The high concentrations aluminum contained in electrolytic solutions have a high resource potential and economic value. In this study, the co-precipitation method was used to recover the waste aluminum electrolytic solution. The results show that the purity and particle size of the recovered Al₂O₃ were 99.943% and 0.174 μm, similar with the commercial Al₂O₃ powder. Additionally, about 80% of the used ammonia could be recycled and reused in the reaction process. The processing technology presented in this work is thus feasible, and the application methods and economies of scale achievable with this approach are competitive and have commercial development value.

Keywords:

• Waste aluminum electrolytic solution
• Recovery
• α-Al₂O₃
• Materialization

Notes

Presented at the 8th International Conference on Challenges in Environmental Science & Engineering (CESE-2015) 28 September–2 October 2015, Sydney, Australia