Document Type

Honors Thesis

Publication Date

9-9-2026

Abstract

The problem of ferric ions (Fe³⁺) in industrial wastewater is a critical issue for several sectors, such as mining, electronic plating, and metal finishing, due to both its environmental and economic impact. Traditional treatment methods using energy-intensive procedures and unsafe organic solvents are not in compliance with sustainability, but can succeed in achieving a valid metal recycling. By utilizing deep eutectic solvents (DES) and resonant vibratory mixing technology, an environmental friendly method is developed to selectively extract/precipitate ferric ions from waste aqueous solutions. Deep eutectic solvents (DES) have been developed to replace common organic solvents, representing environmental friendly alternatives with tunable physicochemical properties, low toxicity, and biodegradability, together with high metal extraction efficiency. Resonant vibratory mixing (RVM) is a recently developed mechanochemical approach that works through low-frequency solution-phase acoustic agitation to achieve efficient mass transfer and reaction kinetics in the absence of bulk solvent or milling media. This integrated method contributes to a major solution for sustainable and scalable metal recovery from industrial wastewaters.

This proposed study looks to create and refine a complete separation system using resonant vibratory mixing, promoting precipitation and hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (HDES) for liquid-liquid extraction. Newly developed HDES will be studied for the following applications: (1) synthesis and characterization of new HDES designed for ferric ion extraction; (2) optimization of solvent extraction systems in terms of pH, operating temperature, contact time, and phase ratios; (3) incoporation/implementation of resonant acoustic mixing to facilitate extraction kinetics and precipiation efficiency; (4) development of regeneration procedures for DES recovery/reusability; and finally (5 ) feasibility study assessing impacts of environmental side-effects. Target achievements are a scalable continuous processing system with  >95% ferric ion removal efficiency and demonstrate DES-regeneration for a minimum of 10 cycles with no perceivable loss in process performance. The work may be pushing the green separation technology forward and further developing green recovery resources and industrial wastewater treatment processes.

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