Boron treatment

Boron can be tricky to remove, especially if you do not know what form it is in. It can be as boron, as boric acid, as borate, or many others. There are several methods to remove boron from waste water, and given your location, I would say that you are likely getting hit with Maylasia B standards, right? If thats the case, then you should look at a capture, concentrate, and haul technology that will get you to the very low standards reliably. I am not aware of any polymers that have successfully been implemented to remove boron. There are specific ion exchange resins that we have used to remove it, and they fair well as long as they are taken care of and the pre-treatment is completed correctly.

Tom Baker       wastewater treatment specialist Warminster, Pennsylvania

Ed. note: We have lost contact with Tom. If anyone has contact info, please advise.

Majority of what you see will be borate ions. Try contacting your local Rohm & Haas ion exchange resin dealer and ask for XE-243 or it's latest equivalent. You can also use a product from Purolite, S-108. These resins regenerate with sulfuric acid and allow you to crystallize boric acid in hig acid concentrations, so no haul off is necessary, and the boric acid can be reused in the process wher eit came from. Hope this helps.

I would not recommend the reuse of boric acid obtained from regenerated ion exchange resin. While it is certainly a novel method of removing borate, the purity of the boric acid is so low as compared to even a moderate purity of technical grade boric acid that you would be looking for trouble in your plating quality. Same goes for metals and metal solutions - they don't even meet the most liberal purity standards required by platers.

The regeneration is a two step process, and requires sodium hydroxide to condition the resin to accept borate. If you want to pursue that method, be prepared to have an extra waste stream to treat that is essentially just another cost center.

Tom Baker       wastewater treatment specialist Warminster, Pennsylvania

Ed. note: We have lost contact with Tom. If anyone has contact info, please advise.

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Ed. note: Readers who wish to answer, please do so. Readers who are looking for answers please see our FAQ on waste water treatments for boron. It lists the more than 20 threads on this topic that are on line here.