Abstract
Impala Platinum Metal Refinery (PMR) produces about 30 tonnes of salt every month after crystallisation of effluent from the refining processes. These crystallised salts contain impurities (heavy metals) and are discarded. This poses a danger to the environment and it costs the company large amount money to correctly dump them. There is need to find ways of purifying these salts and find its alternative industrial uses. Major sectors identified using industrial salt were paper mills, pharmaceutical, textile, tanning and paint industrial sectors (Department of Minerals and Energy, 2001). Comparison of the salt composition with salt specifications required for these uses revealed that the salt needed further purification in order to find application in these industrial sectors. Two approaches were proposed; treatment of the crystallized salt to remove impurities and treatment of the crystallizer influent stream before crystallization to ensure a more pure salt is produced...