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Characteristic pollutant purification analysis of modified phosphogypsum comprehensive utilization

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A Correction to this article was published on 08 September 2022

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Abstract

The waste product phosphogypsum (PG) is produced in phosphoric acid production processes. Its storage requires large amounts of land resources and poses serious environmental risks. In this work, detailed experimental research was carried out to investigate the potential reuse of PG after calcination modification as a novel building material for cast-in-place concrete products. The calcination modification mechanism was studied, and the environmental risk assessment of modified PG was presented. The results showed that the calcination modification includes crystal phase transformation, removal of impurities, and modifying the pH value. The calcination was carried out at 280 °C for 5 h, where the resulting product was a pH value of 7.1, and the soluble fluorine and phosphorus removal rates reached up to 69.2% and 71.2%, respectively. These removal rates met the requirements of the China national standard Phosphogypsum (GB/T 23456-2018). To ensure the environmental safety, ecological risk assessment methods for determining the leaching toxicity of the modified PG were employed. The toxicity of Ba and P elements in the modified PG products was assessed, as well as the leaching toxicity concentrations of all particular heavy metals, which were found well below the limits set by the national standards. All the results presented strongly suggest that the 280 °C modified PG presented here has excellent application potential as a raw component in building materials.

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Funding

The study was financially supported by Opening Project of Key Laboratory of Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recycle, Ministry of Education (20kfck03), Opening Project of Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences (KLUPC-KF-2020-2), Key Laboratory of Advanced Civil Engineering Materials (Tongji University), Ministry of Education (202103), Youth Project of Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Education Commission of China (KJQN202100723).

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Chao-qiang Wang: framework design, experiment, investigation, and analysis. De-ming Xiong: assisting with research and experiments and data analysis. Yu Chen: assisting with research and experiments and data analysis. Kai Wu: assisting with research and experiments and data analysis. Min-jie Tu: assisting with methodology and investigation. Pei-xin Wang: assisting with methodology and investigation. Zhao-ji Zhang: assisting with methodology and investigation. Lei Zhou: assisting with methodology and investigation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to De-ming Xiong, Kai Wu or Zhao-ji Zhang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Wang, Cq., Xiong, Dm., Chen, Y. et al. Characteristic pollutant purification analysis of modified phosphogypsum comprehensive utilization. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 67456–67465 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22737-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22737-y

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