ABSTRACT Heavy metal pollution from lead–acid battery industry wastewater (LABIW) poses serious risks to the environment and human health. Conventional treatment methods often remove metals inefficiently due to the production of unstable sludge that inflates treatment costs. This study applies the fluidized-bed homogeneous granulation process as a more controllable approach for simultaneous Pb and Zn recovery from simulated LABIW. The effects of concentration, molar ratio, pH, and flow rate were examined to determine the optimal operating conditions that promote effective granulation and metal removal. The optimum conditions were 2,600 ppm Pb, 300 ppm Zn, 1.5 molar ratio, 10.5 pH, and 5 mL/min flow rate. This achieved total removal efficiencies of 99.99 % for Pb and 99.98 % for Zn and granulation efficiencies of 98.99 % and 99.09 % for PbCO 3 and ZnCO 3 . This method effectively reduced sludge volume by producing dense minerals compared water-heavy flocs in conventional precipitation. FBHG additionally contributes to scalable recovery systems by reintroducing industrial metals back into the supply chain as high purity crystalline granules. Crystalline PbCO 3 , Pb 2 CO 3 (OH) 2 , and ZnCO 3 were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). This study bridges the gap in the lack of systematic parametric investigation and product characterization of FBHG applied to the binary Pb-Zn solution from LABIW. The findings establish a baseline for designing sustainable and effective treatment systems for industrial wastewater.
Mamuad et al. (Fri,) studied this question.