Decontamination of soils, Part 2
Flotation – a reliable technology in solid hazardous waste treatmentSummary: Flotation is a reliable solution for remediating contaminated soils. In the first part of the paper, published in AT 6/2013, pp. 60-72, the author gave an overview of soil washing technology with reference to dedicated plants in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Part 2 of the paper focuses on the latest research findings based on forward-pointing flotation tests for the recovery of metals and mercury from contaminated soils on an industrial scale.
2 Implementation of flotation in existing soil washing plants
The first application of froth flotation in a physical-chemical soil washing plant (Fig. 10) in Germany was performed by RICHTER, SCHMIDT ET AL. (1997) [22] in a soil treatment facility in Berlin by up-grading the existing plant with modified Fahrenwald type sub-aeration machines provided by the German vendor SKET. Using common flotation reagents from coal processing, several thousand metric tons of highly organically contaminated soil with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) greater than or equal to 20 000 [mg/kg DW] were...