Processing of Water Treatment Sludge by Bioleaching

Tomasz Kamizela and Malgorzata Worwag
Additional contact information
Tomasz Kamizela: Faculty of Infrastructure and Environment, Czestochowa University of Technology, 42-200 Czestochowa, Poland
Malgorzata Worwag: Faculty of Infrastructure and Environment, Czestochowa University of Technology, 42-200 Czestochowa, Poland

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-20

Abstract: Biological metal leaching is a technology used in the mining and biohydrometallurgy industries where microorganisms mediate the dissolution of metals and semi-metals from mineral ores and concentrates. The technology also has great potential for various types of metal-rich waste. In this study, bioleaching was used for sludge from water treatment. In addition to checking the applicability of the process to such a substrate, the influence of experimental conditions on the effectiveness of bioleaching of metals with sludge from water treatment was also determined, including sample acidification, addition of elemental sulfur, incubation temperature, and Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans -isolated strain. The measurement of metal concentration and, on this basis, the determination of bioleaching efficiency, as well as pH and oxygen redox potential (ORP), was carried out during the experiment at the following time intervals: 3, 6, 9, 12 days. After the experiment was completed, a mass balance was also prepared. After the experiment, high efficiency of the process was obtained for the tested substrate. The effectiveness of the process for most metals was high (Ca 96.8%, Cr 92.6%, Cu 80.6%, Fe 95.6%, Mg 91%, Mn 99.5%, Ni 89.7%, Pb 99.5%, Zn 93%). Only lower values were obtained for Al (58.6%) and Cd (68.4%).

Keywords: bioleaching; metal recovery; Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans; sludge from water treatment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/24/6539/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/24/6539/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:24:p:6539-:d:460356

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().