Decontamination of soils, Part 2

Flotation – a reliable technology in solid hazardous waste treatment

Summary: 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...

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