Remoción de la carga contaminante de un agua sintética que simula efluentes líquidos del proceso de flotación de oro: determinación de las mejores condiciones para la remoción de la carga contaminante de un agua sintética que simula efluente líquidos del proceso de flotación de oro mediante el proceso Fenton convencional.

Abstract

Under certain circumstances, activities related to metallic mining could release toxic organic substances affecting the environment, mainly from flotation processes where collectors such as sodium isopropyl xanthate (XIS) are used. This has led to the need to investigate treatments for its degradation, such as the Fenton process. In the present work, the conventional Fenton process and, as an alternative, the heterogeneous Fenton process (with corroded iron wires of XIS) were studied. Different molar ratios [Fe2+]:[H2O2] were tested to determine which one allowed the greatest degradation of XIS by the conventional Fenton process at pH 3 and with a reaction time of 30 min. The Fe2+ concentration was kept constant. The best [Fe2+]:[H2O2] ratio was determined to be 1:60. For the heterogeneous Fenton process tests, soluble iron was replaced by an insoluble iron source (corroded iron wires). The XIS degradations achieved with the conventional and heterogeneous Fenton processes, both at pH 3, were 76.11 and 36.88%, respectively. The application of the heterogeneous Fenton process at pH 5 allowed to achieve a removal of XIS of 58.57%. This shows that the heterogeneous Fenton process has great potential since it would allow significant removal of the contaminant at more moderate pH values.