Abstract
The removal and recovery of metals from wastewater has been a subject of
significant importance due the negative impact these toxic metals have on human health and
the environment as a result of water and soil pollution. Increased use of the metals and
chemicals in the process industries has resulted in generation of large quantity of effluents that
contains high level of toxic metals and other pollutants. The objective of this work was to
recover of Cu in its elemental form as metallic powder from aqueous solution using NaBH4 as
a reducing agent. Reductive precipitation was achieved in a batch reactor at 65oC using Cu
powder as a seeding material. This study also investigated the effect of concentration of
sodium borohydride (NaBH4) as a reducing agent. The amount of NaBH4 was varied based on
mole ratios which are 1:1, 1:0.25 and 1:0.1 to recover Cu from synthetic wastewater. The
results obtained showed that sodium borohydride is an effective reducing agent to recover Cu
from wastewater. The optimum concentration of NaBH4 that gives the best results the 1:1
molar ratio with over 99% Cu removal.