The sludge wastes generated by the metal plating industries are classified as hazardous wastes because of their high concentration of heavy metals. Amongst the various routes for their treatment, the hydrometallurgical processes are highly attractive because they can be tailored to the wide compositional range of such wastes and assure its metals recovery and/or toxicity reduction. In these processes the leaching operation is paramount to the overall efficiency. In this, the mixing of the leaching solution with sludge has to be effective in order to obtain high levels of metal extraction and make the process attractive. Most of the available data refers to laboratory tests. This paper reports on the use of CFD model to optimize the operation of a pilot size leaching tank. The results regarding the velocity field were compared with experimental data and proved that such techniques can be effectively applied to improve the process. A leaching experiment, with the best configuration for the mixing, yielded a high metal extraction, suggesting that this technique can be successfully implemented for the treatment of such wastes.
