Mine water has a huge amount of sulfates (even more than 500 ppm). It is known that clasic ARD treatment does not precipitate sulfates and it exists some extra treatments for the sulfate removal (like savmin process). But, is it possible to remove sulfate by electrodeposition?
Thanks
Electrodeposition generally is applied for the recovery of metals that can be electrodeposited on the cathode surface. If you want to remove sulfates from solutions using an electrochemical technique, maybe an electrodialysis will be more successful.
You cannot perform the electrodeposition of sulfate directly in an electrode. I don't know how "clean" you need the water (free of other species), but a possibility could be to perform a cathodic stripping with an electrode of a material which forms an insoluble sulfate (maybe Ag or Pb). The cathodic stripping process would oxidise the electrode, which would form the metal-sulfate insoluble compound, hopefully, on the electrode surface. However, I do not know what would be the efficacy of this process in your case.
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