René Ruby-Figueroa

• PhD
• Researcher at Metropolitan University of Technology

Membrane filtration, particularly MF-UF, has previously been assessed as an attractive process for clarifying and recovering valuable metals from metal sulfide precipitation. Previous results of the high transmembrane flux achieved have shown to be promising. However, those studies were primarily focused on demonstrating the method’s feasibility an...

Lithium brine processing using Membrane Distillation-Crystallization (MDCr) technology has proven as a plausible approach for high-quality water recovery and production of high-purity crystals. Nevertheless, the crystallization of other valuable minerals from lithium brines, such as potassium and magnesium in the sylvinite and bischofite stages, ha...

Ceramic membrane fouling is a constraint in the treatment of acid mine drainage (AMD), leading to a decrease in efficiency over time. Here, it is described via first-principles calculations the physical and chemical phenomena occurring on the surface of TiZrO4 filtration membranes due to the adsorption of eight potential fouling compounds [CuS, FeS...

This study analyzes the research quality assurance processes in Chilean universities. Data from 29 universities accredited by the National Accreditation Commission were collected. The relationship between institutional accreditation and research performance was analyzed using length in years of institutional accreditation and eight research metrics...

The recovery of valuable compounds like phenolic compounds and sugars from grape marc extracts implies different steps, including clarification. In this study, a response surface methodology (RSM) was used as a statistical tool to study the effects of operating conditions such as transmembrane pressure (TMP), temperature and feed flow rate on the p...

Osmotic distillation (OD) was implemented at laboratory scale to concentrate a red fruit juice produced from a blend of blood orange, prickly pear, and pomegranate juice. The raw juice was clarified by microfiltration and then concentrated by using an OD plant equipped with a hollow fiber membrane contactor. The clarified juice was recirculated on...

The current lithium extraction from hypersaline salt-lake brines is causing concerns, mainly due to the evaporation and loss of around 90 % of the water contained in the brines, tensioning the relationship between communities and industrial companies located in zones with a severe water scarcity. This study assesses the water recovery from syntheti...

In gold cyanidation plants, which include a zinc cementation process, there is a progressive increase in zinc content in the solution and a higher cyanide concentration in leaching tailings. Consequently, there are opportunities to: (i) recover zinc and cyanide from these solutions, (ii) generate a saleable ZnS by-product, and (iii) reduce cyanide...

Fruit and vegetable processing industries generate huge amounts of highly polluting wastes and by-products because of their high organic load resistant to biological degradation. On the other hand, intensive researches suggest that these effluents should be regarded as a useful resource for the recovery of fine chemicals and for different biotechno...

Acid mine drainages (AMD) are the most harmful and chemically complex aqueous waste produced by the mining industry, causing contamination of fresh water sources, affecting human communities and the environment surrounding the mine facilities. Nowadays, AMD treatments use a high amount of reagents that produce a considerable quantity of waste, limi...

The industrial validated technology used in gold mining that deals with copper‑gold ores is the SART process, which allows a viable treatment for these complex minerals. The clarification or thickening stage in this processing, in which copper precipitates are separated, has several challenges such as copper losses (as solids in the overflow or by...

Mining is an economically-beneficial activity recognized as crucial in modern society since almost every aspect of our lives relies on minerals. However, intensive mining activities impose a severe strain on the water-energy nexus. In fact, mining ventures: i) need massive amount of water in various ore processing steps; ii) generate a huge amount...

In any membrane filtration, the prediction of permeate flux is critical to calculate the membrane surface required, which is an essential parameter for scaling-up, equipment sizing, and cost determination. For this reason, several models based on phenomenological or theoretical derivation (such as gel-polarization, osmotic pressure, resistance-in-s...

Wastewaters and by-products generated in the winemaking process are important and inexpensive sources of value-added compounds that can be potentially reused for the development of new products of commercial interest (i.e., functional foods). This research was undertaken in order to evaluate the potential of nanofiltration (NF) membranes in the rec...

The metal sulfide precipitation process is a widely studied technology used to recover metals or remove pollutants from different aqueous sources. However, the conventional clarification stage used to separate the generated precipitates cannot effectively remove them from recovered solutions. Taking this into account, the current study focuses on d...

The copper sulfide precipitation is a selective and efficient method for the recovery or removal of metals. However, the suspension behavior, and particularly the aggregation performance of generated precipitates, is still under investigation. In this context, the current work focuses on the assessment of the aggregation size evolution of copper su...

The presentation shows the study for the development of the new SuCy process to recover copper and cyanide in gold cyanidation plants.

Cyanide is one of the main reagents used in gold mining that can be recovered to reduce operational costs. Gas membrane technology is an attractive method for intensifying both the stripping and absorption processes of valuable compounds, such as cyanide. However, scaling-up this technology from laboratory to industry is an unsolved challenge becau...

Power ultrasound (US) transmits substantial amounts of small mechanical movements serving for particle detaching in membrane filtrations. This topic has been reviewed in recent years mainly focused on the mechanisms by which the flux is improved under specific processing conditions. US also been shown to improve food quality by changing physical pr...

Particle size distribution (PSD) determination is a typical practice for the characterization of the slurries generated in a precipitation plant. Furthermore, the precipitates generated in these processes form colloidal or aggregated suspensions. Nevertheless, the conventional methods used to estimate PSD (e.g., laser diffraction and/or a cyclosize...

The influence of membrane pore size on the permeate flux, fouling mechanism, and rejection of soluble and suspended solids, as well as of phenolics and anthocyanins, in the clarification of grape marc extract by microfiltration (MF) was studied. MF was operated by using three monotubular ceramic membranes with a pore size of 0.14, 0.2, and 0.8 µm,...

Precipitation processes are technologies commonly used in hydrometallurgical plants to recover metals or to treat wastewaters. Moreover, solid-liquid separation technologies, such as thickening or filtering, are relevant unit operations, included in the precipitation technologies. These methods are strongly dependent on the characteristics of the s...

The interaction of H2O onto small CuS, Cu2S, and ZnS clusters was theoretically studied by Density Functional Theory computations to get insights into the aggregation characteristics of metal sulfides at aqueous solutions. The results show the charge-controlled interactions with polarized solvent molecules are favored on the ZnS clusters compared w...

The orange press liquor is a by-product of the orange juice production containing bioactive compounds recognized for their beneficial implications in human health. The recovery of these compounds offers new opportunities for the formulation of products of interest in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. The clarification of orange press liqu...

Four commercial spiral‐wound membranes with nominal molecular weight cut‐off (NMWCO) from 150–300 to 3,500 Da were tested in order to evaluate their performance in the recovery of brutieridin and melitidin from clarified bergamot juice. Filtration experiments in batch concentration mode were performed on a laboratory filtration membrane equipment i...

Cyanide recovery in the gold-mining industry is a crucial step in terms of the cost of operation. Currently, a process such as AVR (acidification, volatilization and recycling), based on packed towers for stripping and absorption stages, addresses this issue with high levels of investment and operational costs. Gas-filled membrane absorption (GFMA)...

New tendencies respect to economic development model in the process of agro-industrial materials are oriented to circular economy in which the treatment and reuse of wastes and by-product play a crucial role. Over the last decades, different products from agro-food industries have been processed by membrane technologies (micro, ultra and nano-filtr...

Pressure-driven membrane-based technologies represent a valid approach to reduce the environmental pollution of several agro-food by-products. Recently, in relation to the major interest for natural compounds with biological activities, their use has been also addressed to the recovery, separation and fractionation of phenolic compounds from such b...

The quantitative prediction of phenomena responsible of flux decline is of great interest in membrane operations. In this work the application of ARIMA models was investigated to predict the permeate flux in the ultrafiltration (UF) of fruit juices during 6 h of continuous operation. Models were constructed with the filtration data of fruit juices...

A purification process of galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS), using three-stage serial nanofiltration (NF) units, operating under critical transmembrane pressure (TMPc) was designed. Three commercial flat-sheet membranes were tested at 53.5 °C and 65 °C, using GOS solutions at 20 and 40°Brix. Since one of the main drawbacks of NF for the purification o...

Orange press liquor, a by-product of the orange juice production, was clarified by cross flow ultrafiltration (UF), on laboratory scale, by using polysulphone hollow fibre membranes with molecular weight cut-off of 100 kDa. The effect of operating conditions, such as transmembrane pressure, feed flow rate and temperature, on fouling index, total re...

Commercial nanofiltration (NF) membranes in spiral-wound configuration (NP030 from Microdyn Nadir and Desal DK from GE Water & Process Technologies) were used in a sequential design in order to produce a separated fraction of phenolic and sugar compounds from an aqueous artichoke extract. For both membranes, the effect of transmembrane pressure (TM...

Orange press liquor is a by-product generated by the citrus processing industry containing huge amounts of natural phenolic compounds with recognized antioxidant activity. In this work, an integrated membrane process for the recovery of flavonoids from orange press liquors was investigated on a laboratory scale. The liquor was previously clarified...

In the present work the ultrafiltration (UF) of orange press liquor was analyzed by means of the response surface methodology (RSM). The liquor was clarified by using polysulphone hollow fiber membranes with a molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) of 100 kDa. The influence of different operating conditions, such as transmembrane pressure (TMP), axial fee...

Statistical tools were used to analyze membrane fouling occurring during ultrafiltration (UF) of clarified grape juice. Experimental flux data were correlated to dead-end and crossflow filtration models. The UF experiments were performed at 30 and 40 °C for an 8-kDa multitubular ceramic membrane and also at 30 °C for a 1-kDa membrane to determine t...

Recirculation systems are becoming widely used in the aquaculture industry, where ammonium removal results are crucial for a proper performance considering its high toxicity on fish. The objective of this study was to assess the ammonium retention, when the transmembrane pressure (TMP) in nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are c...

Unlabelled: Grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) possess health-promoting effects attributed to their supply of a wide variety of bioactive phenolics. Juice and skin fractions of 4 varieties of table grapes: Red Globe, Crimson Seedless, Autumn Royal, and Ribier were prepared to determine and compare their total phenolics content, antioxidant capacity (DPPH,...