Galderia has commercially introduced a palladium recovery system using a microalgae-derived biosorbent and begun operating it on a Kakihara Kogyo production line. The system achieves online recovery from wash water under highly acidic, ultralow-concentration conditions and in the presence of tin.
Galderia has commercially introduced an ultralow-concentration recovery system that uses a precious-metal adsorbent derived from the microalga Galdieria to recover palladium online. The system targets plating wash water that is highly acidic and low in palladium concentration, with tin present at high concentrations, and full-scale recovery operations have begun. The company plans to develop the system as an urban-mining solution that turns low-concentration precious metals previously discharged as wastewater into resources.
Conventional recovery technologies required extensive pretreatment and considerable space, and often necessitated changes to the plating process. Since wastewater treatment is not directly involved in manufacturing products, the barriers to adoption were high. Galderia developed its own pretreatment process to address these issues and enable recovery.
At the site, continuous processing is being carried out without stopping the line, targeting wash water from Kakihara Kogyo's resin-plating process for automotive parts. The system successfully recovered palladium at an ultralow concentration of approximately 1 mg/L. It was confirmed that the adsorbent after recovery would be sold to a refining company as precious-metal feedstock, demonstrating the feasibility of a circular process that converts wastewater into resources.
In collaboration with Nippon Denko's Aqua Solutions business, the system has achieved stable operation at an actual factory. It is currently operating stably on part of Kakihara Kogyo's production line, and expansion to other lines is under consideration. In the future, the company aims to expand the system to a range of precious and rare metals, including Au, Pt, Ru and Ir.