Authors: Evan Johnson, Marielia Young, Davis Ross
Abstract: The indiscriminate disposal of Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) sludge from industries leads to soil, groundwater and surface water pollutions. To avoid the high costs associated with the disposal of large volume of this sludge, this material can be used in some building materials or can be used as fertilizer. As the accumulation of heavy metals in plants causes threat to living beings, it has to be pretreated to remove heavy metals from the sludge to required levels. Soil washing can be used to separate heavy metals from the sludge. For the present study, ETP sludge was assessed to know the removal efficiencies of five leaching solutions. The leaching solutions attempted were distilled water, 0.1 N HCl, 0.1 N EDTA, 0.1 N HCl + 0.1 N EDTA and 0.1 N FeCl3. Column leach tests were conducted on the ETP sludge using the selected leaching solutions and the migration rates of different metal ions were determined. The efficiencies of different leaching solutions were compared and was found that 0.1 N HCl + 0.1 N EDTA and 0.1 N FeCl3 are the most suitable solutions to remove heavy metals from this sludge.
Keywords: HCl, EDTA, FeCl3, Dispersion coefficient, Retardation factor
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