Adsorption characteristics of waste concrete on the heavy metals copper and lead in water

Abstract: The direct or indirect discharge of industrial wastewater leads to the high degree of pollution of heavy metals in Chinese natural water resources. The removal of heavy metals sewage is a problem that is exigent to be solved. However, existing heavy metal removal methods are generally found to be too complicated or expensive. Because the waste concrete particles contain cement hydration products and unhydrated cement particles, which have a certain activity and a high specific surface area. This paper tries to use the waste concrete particles as the adsorption material of water polluted by heavy metals. Through the heavy metals leaching test, it is found that the heavy metal leaching capacity is related to the particle size of the waste concrete. The larger the particle size is, the smaller the heavy metal leaching capacity is. Based on the test data and the discharge threshold requirements of the National Comprehensive Sewage Discharge Standard, the optimal selected particle size of the waste concrete particle material is finally determined. Then, by the static adsorption test, the effect of the adsorption time, the adsorbent dosage and the initial mass concentration of heavy metal on the adsorption of heavy metals copper and lead in waste concrete are mainly investigated. The result shows that the adsorption time, waste concrete dosage and initial concentration of heavy metal copper and lead will affect the adsorption properties of waste concrete. With the increase of adsorption time, the adsorption of two heavy metals copper and lead shows a trend of increasing first and then stabilizing. In the first 100 min, the adsorption of copper and lead quickly reached the equilibrium. With the increase of the initial mass concentration of copper and lead, the removal rate of the two heavy metal gradually decreases, and the adsorption capacity gradually increases and then stabilizes. When the initial mass concentration is less than 150 mg/L, the adsorption capacity for heavy metal copper is positively correlated, while heavy metal lead is positively correlated at the initial mass concentration of 200 mg/L. However, with the increase of waste concrete dosage, the removal rate of the two heavy metals copper and lead increases first and then stabilized. The adsorption of heavy metals copper and lead on waste concrete conforms to the Langmiur isothermal adsorption model, and the maximum adsorption capacity obtains 40.75 and 86.73 mg/g respectively; the pseudo-second-order kinetic model is more suitable for describing the adsorption process of heavy metals copper and lead on waste concrete, which indicating that the adsorption rate is controlled by chemisorption. Compared with other common adsorbent materials, the maximum adsorption capacity of heavy metals lead and copper on the waste concrete is much higher than natural zeolite and palygorskite, while the maximum adsorption capacity of heavy metal copper is lower than activated carbon. However, based on the price, the recycling price of waste concrete is still far lower than the market price of activated carbon even if the processing cost caused by crushing. This also reflects that the waste concrete has good adsorption capacity for the heavy metals copper and lead, which can be used as an adsorption material to treat the wastewater containing heavy metals copper and lead.