Synthesis and heavy metal immobilization behaviors of fly ash based gepolymer

Abstract

Two aspects of studies were carried out: 1) synthesis of geopolymer by using fly ash and metakaolin; 2) Immobilization behaviors of fly ash based geopolymer in a presence of Pb and Cu ions. As for the synthesis of fly ash based geopolymer, 4 different fly ash content (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%) and 3 types of curing regimes (standard curing, steam curing and autoclave curing) were investigated to obtain the optimum synthesis condition based on the compressive and flexural strength. The experimental results show that geopolymer, containing 30% fly ash and synthesized at steam curing (80° for 8 h), exhibits higher mechanical strengths. The compressive and flexural strengths of fly ash based geopolymer reach 32.2 MPa and 7.15 MPa, respectively. Additionally, Infrared (IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were used to characterize the microstructure of the fly ash geopolymer. IR spectra shows that the absorptive band at 1086 cm⁻¹ shifts to lower wave number around 1033 cm⁻¹, and the 6-coordinated Al transforms into 4-coordination during the synthesis of fly ash based geopolymer. The resulting geopolymeric products were X-ray amorphous materials. As for immobilization of heavy metals, the leaching tests were employed to investigate the immobilization behaviors of the fly ash based geopolymer synthesized under the above optimum condition. The leaching tests showed that fly ash based geopolymer can effectively immobilize Cu and Pb heavy metal ions, and the immobilization efficiency reached 90% greater when heavy metals were incorporated in the fly ash geopolymer in the range of 0.1% to 0.3%. The Pb exhibits better immobilization efficiency than the Cu, especially in the case of large dosages of heavy metals.

Keywords

geopolymer / fly ash / synthesis / immobilization / heavy metals

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