Treatment of Copper-Contaminated Wastewater via Cementation using a Bimetallic Rotating Cylinder Reactor

Mohamed Abbas  El-Naggar

doi:10.6180/jase.2026.26030003

Treatment of Copper-Contaminated Wastewater via Cementation using a Bimetallic Rotating Cylinder Reactor

Chemical Engineering

Mohamed Abbas El-Naggar^1,2This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

¹Department of General Subjects, University of Business and Technology, Jeddah 21361, Saudi Arabia

²Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21544, Egypt.

Received: September 4, 2025
Accepted: October 26, 2025
Publication Date: November 30, 2025

Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.

Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.2026.26030003

The kinetics of copper cementation from copper (II) chloride (CuCl₂) solutions were investigated using a rotating galvanic cylinder reactor composed of aluminum and copper. The effects of CuCl₂ concentration, area ratio of aluminum anode to copper cathode (AAl/ACu ), and cylinder rotation speed were studied. Results indicated that cementation rate increases with both CuCl² concentration and cylinder rotation speed. Conversely, increasing the area ratio (A_Al/A_Cu) led to a decrease in the mass transfer coefficient. A dimensionless mass transfer correlation was developed and found to provide a good fit to the experimental data:

Sh=1.87Sc^0.33Re^0.61 (A_Al/A_Cu)^−0.3

This equation can be directly applied for scaling up the reactor used in this study. Furthermore, a comparison between galvanic cementation (using an Al/Cu galvanic couple) and direct cementation (using a rotating Al cylinder) shows that galvanic cementation offers superior performance. Finally, the energy utilization efficiency ( kA/ϵ ) was found to range from 0.11×10⁻⁵ to 5.71×10⁻⁵ m³·kg/s·W, indicating a relatively efficient process for copper recovery.

Keywords: MassTransfer, Cementation, Hydrometallurgy, Wastewater, Heavy metal recovery, Bimetallic galvanic cementation

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