Feasible waste liquid treatment from electroless nickel-plating by intense magnetic field of HTS bulk magnets

Nickel (Ni) is a kind of the rare earth resources. Since Ni-containing waste is drained after several plating operations in the factories, the effective recycling technique has been expected to be introduced. An actual magnetic separation technique using HTS bulk magnet generating the strong magnetic field has succeeded in collecting the paramagnetic slurry containing Ni-sulphate coarse crystals which were fabricated from the Ni-plating waste. The Ni compound in the collected slurry was identified as NiSO4/6H2O, showing slight differences in the particle size and magnetic susceptibility between the samples attracted and not-attract to the magnetic pole. This preferential extraction suggests us a novel recycling method of Ni resource because the compound is capable of recycling back to the plating processes as a raw material.