Water Treatment After Finishing

Water is essential to the processing of plating and finishing in the electroplating industry. A typical plating shop has dozens of tanks of water, many intentionally mixed with compounds such as metals or acids. These tanks are used in the processing of customer parts. There are many tanks that are set aside for the rinsing of the parts after a stage in the treatment process.

What does an environmental-conscious firm like F.M. Callahan & Son do to treat all of these “contaminated” tanks of water?

1. Micro Filtration. We direct this water through an elaborate system of pipes, pumps, and tanks into a micro filtration system that removes suspended solids and other “larger” contaminants from the water. This results in the creation of a “sludge” containing such contaminants extracted from the water. The sludge is dried and then shipped in containers to a waste management company for further environmental processing. Using a metaphor, this system would remove small pieces of lemon from a class of homemade lemonade. However, the lemon juice that had dissolved into the water would remain.
2. Reverse Osmosis. We process the micro filtrated water in a reverse osmosis system that extracts the “smaller” contaminants from the water. In our metaphor above, this system would remove the lemon juice from the water resulting in water that is as if it had never been used in our shop.

The processed water will be suitable for distribution either back into the city’s water treatment system or for use in the tanks in our facility for the treatment of other customer parts.