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Leaching characteristics of Cr in municipal solid waste incineration fly ash solidified/stabilized using blast furnace slag-based cementitious materials

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Abstract

The immobilization of Cr is important for the treatment of municipal solid waste incineration fly ash, and the solidification of Cr in cement-free materials has not been fully investigated. In this study, blast furnace slag-based cementitious materials were used as binders to immobilize Cr-bearing fly ash to prepare solidified materials. The environmental safety of Cr in solidified materials was demonstrated using static batch leaching tests. Mass transfer leaching tests showed that the Cr leaching concentrations were 38.8, 41.6, 43.0, and 47.5 μg/L, with immobilization rates all above 90%. The mechanism of Cr leached from the solidified material was mainly diffusion, with effective diffusion coefficient values between 8.69*10–14 and 1.05*10–11, and the mean leaching index values were greater than 9. In dynamic droplet leaching tests, the Cr leaching concentrations were less than 50 μg/L; the mechanism of Cr leached from solidified materials was mainly a combination of wash-off and diffusion. Acid/base neutralization capacity tests showed that the Cr leaching concentrations were higher in acidic and alkaline conditions than at pH = 8–10. Cr existed mainly as Cr6+ in alkaline and strongly acidic environments, while existing mainly as Cr3+ in weakly acidic and neutral environments. Finally, Tessier sequential extraction demonstrated that the percentage of easily mobile Cr decreased from 55.36 to 14.88–27.57% after solidification, whereas the percentage of non-mobile Cr increased from 44.64 to 62.43–85.12%. These results suggest that the state of Cr became increasingly stable after S/S treatment, proving that the S/S procedure applied in this study effectively solidified Cr in fly ash.

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Abbreviations

MSW:

Municipal solid waste

MSWI:

Municipal solid waste incineration

BFS:

Blast furnace slag

FGDG:

Flue gas desulfurization gypsum

ANC/BNC:

Acid/base neutralization capacity

S/S:

Solidification/stabilization

De:

Effective diffusion coefficient

LI:

Leaching index

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the financial support of the Science and Technology Department of Hebei Province, China [18273807D] and the language assistance from Gang Zhang of MogoEdit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Resources Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Beijing, 10083, China

    K. Wang, K. Li, X. Huang, W. Ni & S. Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education of China for High-Efficient Mining and Safety of Metal Mines, University of Science and Technology, Beijing, 10083, China

    K. Wang, K. Li, X. Huang, W. Ni & S. Zhang

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Resource-Oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants, University of Science and Technology, Beijing, 10083, China

    K. Wang, K. Li, X. Huang, W. Ni & S. Zhang

Authors
  1. K. Wang
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  2. K. Li
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  3. X. Huang
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  5. S. Zhang
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Contributions

KW contributed to formal analysis, investigation, validation, methodology, and writing—original draft; WN contributed to resources and supervision; KL performed the funding acquisition and writing—review and editing; XH investigated and validated the study.

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Correspondence to K. Li.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Written informed consent for publication was obtained from all participants.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Editorial responsibility: Samareh Mirkia.

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Wang, K., Li, K., Huang, X. et al. Leaching characteristics of Cr in municipal solid waste incineration fly ash solidified/stabilized using blast furnace slag-based cementitious materials. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 7457–7468 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03652-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03652-0

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