Removal of Cadmium From Contaminated Water
Abstract Over the past 15 years, about one half million sites with potential contamination have been reported to federal or state authorities. Of these, about 217,000 sites still need remediation (1) and new contaminated sites continue to appear each year. The most common type of contaminants are metals, solvents and petroleum products. Heavy metals are present in two thirds of DOD and superfund sites and about 50% of DOE and RCRA sites. AAM is a new material that possesses the ability to remove heavy metal from conaminated water. AAM consists of fly ash activating chemicals and fillers. AAM barrier material was used to remove Cd from contamination water. Fly ash from three different sources were used to produce reactive barrier of different permeability. AAM materials with permeability 10−2 to 10−1 was created. Only highest permeability proved to be viable for reactive barrier material. AAM barrier from three ash sources with permeability of 10−1 was produced and crushed into pelletized form. To determine effectiveness of the various barriers batch test was performed, based on that result the column test was conducted. In this work contamination barrier with controled permeabilty was tested to determine its ability to remove Cd from contaminated water. AAM barrier material was used in column test to remove Cd from 1000 ppm and 10 ppm solution. The results show that AAM barrier is very effective in removing Cd from highly contaminated water (up 99% efficiency).