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EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF SORPTION OF MICROELEMENTS FROM MINE DRAINAGE ON ZEOLITE AND CLAY

Marina Abrosimova

Abstract

Numerous data on the negative impact of pollutants on the environment indicate the necessity of industrial and sewage water treatment. This problem is actual in the territories of the tailings dams situated in the Kemerovo Region (Ursk and Komsomolsk tailings sites, Russia). In these tailings sites, the main source of pollution is the mine drainages containing copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony. In the absence of reliable protective devices, pollutants can enter to the soil, surface and groundwater, having a significant impact on the environment. The problem of treatment of contaminated surface and groundwater has global scale and is very relevant. Adsorption with the use of natural inorganic materials has become one of the effective methods for removal of contaminants from water. It is promising to use thermally and radioactively stable sorbents, which are characterized by high values of sorption capacity and specific surface area at their low cost. Such sorbents can be zeolite clinoptilolite (Sokirnitskoe deposit, Transcarpathia) and smectite clay (Kamalinskoye deposit, Krasnoyarsk Territory). For the main pollutants, the maximum sorption capacity of the sorbents was calculated. To study the possibility of using these sorbents for mine drainage treatment, series of static experiments were conducted. In the experiments, aqueous extracts from the waste material, and a standard solution (68B Solution AB High-Purity Standards) with the content of 46 elements equal to 100 ppb each were used. The water-rock ratio in the experiments was 10:1. Dynamic experiments of adsorption-precipitation processes were also carried out using thin-layer dynamic membranes formed from clay and zeolite. Since the smallest particles make the main contribution to sorption processes, fractions of less than 10 ?m were isolated to form the membranes. Solutions similar to static experiments were applied in the dynamic experiments. Using calculated coefficients of interphase interaction (R`), the degree of participation of elements in adsorption-desorption processes during the interaction of mine drainage with the selected sorbents was shown. The following methods were used during investigation: atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) method (ContrAA 700, Analytik Jena, Germany), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, Element2, Thermo Scientific, Germany). Both applied sorbents have a large adsorption capacity. The use of clay for sorption of the majority of the studied chemical elements is more appropriate.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017/51/s20.059

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