Heavy metal-contaminated soils are separated into two parts by soil washing, clean sands and highly polluted sludge for further treatment or disposal. At times the so-called clean sands, products of physical soil washing process consisted of wet screen and hydrocyclone, do not meet the soil leaching standard, while satisfying the constituent test.
Putting the clean sand through the acid extraction process may be an alternative to improve its leaching characteristics, assuming extraction of such mobile portions as water-soluble and acid soluble fractions that are determined by the modified BCR extraction procedure. The process of acid extraction is a complex physicochemical phenomenon of heavy metals of different morphology in the soil. Then, the validity of acid extraction process is only determined experimentally.
This study has tested three types of acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and acetic acid, for typical heavy metal contaminants, lead and fluorine. Two types of feed soil, highly contaminated and lightly contaminated soils, and their underflow of the process or clean sands were subject to acids of different concentrations under different liquid solid ratios. The acid extracted fractions were compared to five soil fractions, water-soluble, acid-soluble, reducible, oxidizable and residue, as determined by the modified BCR method extraction procedure. Generally, the fractions most amenable to metal removal by acid extraction are: water-soluble, acid-soluble (carbonates), and reducible (Fe-Mn oxides).
As a result, the acid extraction process was valid for reducing lead leaching value to a certain extent, but not for fluorine. It was also observed that the fractionation data by the modified BCR method did not always clearly explain the leaching characteristics of clean sands because a part of mobile portions still remained or some other mobile portions were newly formed through the acid extraction and/or the rinsing processes.
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