The metal sulfide precipitation process is a widely studied technology used to recover metals or remove pollutants from different aqueous sources. However, the conventional clarification stage used to separate the generated precipitates cannot effectively remove them from recovered solutions. Taking this into account, the current study focuses on developing a new separation method applied in metal sulfide precipitates, based on a membrane filtration process. Different operating conditions and metal concentration in the feed solution were evaluated for the separation of copper sulfide precipitates formed from synthetic cyanide solutions in ceramic microfiltration membranes. Results showed attractive values of flux and copper recovery. Flux results ranged between 0.9 L/m²s and 1.2 L/m²s for copper concentrations above 500 mg/L, and copper recoveries resulted closer to 100% at the determined optimal operating conditions (4.5 pH, 120% NaHS stoichiometric dosage, and 2 bar feed pressure). These flux values decreased up to one order of magnitude for diluted copper concentrations, due to a change of aggregation capacity of precipitates. This study has demonstrated that the membrane filtration process can be a suitable alternative for the conventional gravitational clarification, promoting better performance results in terms of equipment capacity, metal recovery, and process safety.

金属硫化物沉淀过程是一项广泛研究的技术，用于从不同的水源中回收金属或去除污染物。然而，用于分离产生的沉淀物的常规澄清阶段不能有效地将它们从回收的溶液中除去。考虑到这一点，当前的研究重点是基于膜过滤工艺，开发一种应用于金属硫化物沉淀的新分离方法。评估了进料溶液中不同的操作条件和金属浓度，以分离陶瓷微滤膜中由合成氰化物溶液形成的硫化铜沉淀。结果表明助熔剂和铜的回收率具有吸引力。磁通量结果介于0.9 L / m ² s和1.2 L / m ^2之间对于高于500 mg / L的铜浓度，在确定的最佳操作条件（4.5 pH，120％NaHS化学计量剂量和2 bar进料压力）下铜的回收率接近100％。对于稀释的铜浓度，这些通量值降低了一个数量级，这是因为沉淀物的聚集能力发生了变化。这项研究表明，膜过滤工艺可以替代传统的重力澄清技术，从而在设备容量，金属回收率和工艺安全性方面提升更好的性能。