• Feasibility of Chemical Washing and Froth-flotation Separation Processes for the Remediation of Natural Origin Fluorine-enriched Soil

  • Jeonghwan Cho1·Dong-Jun Baek1·Moon Young Jung2·Jinsung An1,2*

  • 1Department of Environment Safety System Engineering, Semyung University, 65 Semyung-ro, Jecheon-si 27136, Korea
    2Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering, Semyung University, 65 Semyung-ro, Jecheon-si 27136, Korea

  • 자연기원 불소축적토양 정화를 위한 화학적 세척 및 부유선별 공법의 적용성 평가

  • 조정환1·백동준1·정문영2·안진성1,2*

  • 1세명대학교 환경안전시스템공학과
    2세명대학교 바이오환경공학과

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study evaluated the feasibility of chemical washing and froth-flotation separation methods for remediating naturally occurring fluorine (F)-enriched soil due to mica weathering. The F concentration of the target soil was analyzed to be 472 ± 40.4 mg/kg. In the chemical washing experiment performed with HCl concentrations of 1, 2, and 2.5 M to remediate the soil enriched with F, only a maximum removal efficiency of up to less than 1% was achieved. As a result of sequential extraction, the residual fraction of F amounted to 99.6%, indicating that most of the F originating from weathered mica minerals was present in the soil in a chemically stable form. Thus, the chemical washing method was found to be infeasible. The froth-flotation separation was adopted by varying the collector amount, the particle size of the sample, and the pulp concentration. Consequently, a maximum removal efficiency of 62.4% (F concentration after remediation = 248 ± 29 mg/kg) was achieved, satisfying the Korean worrisome level of soil contamination (400 mg/kg). In this study, it was demonstrated that physical separation techniques, such as flotation, can be an effective measure for the active remediation (concentration reduction) of soil with accumulated F originating from F-containing mica weathering


Keywords: Natural sources, Fluorine-enriched soil, Soil remediation, Froth-flotation separation, Chemical washing

This Article

  • 2021; 26(2): 28-34

    Published on Apr 30, 2021

  • 10.7857/JSGE.2021.26.2.028
  • Received on Apr 16, 2021
  • Revised on Apr 16, 2021
  • Accepted on Apr 20, 2021

Correspondence to

  • Jinsung An

  • 1Department of Environment Safety System Engineering, Semyung University, 65 Semyung-ro, Jecheon-si 27136, Korea
    2Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering, Semyung University, 65 Semyung-ro, Jecheon-si 27136, Korea

  • E-mail: jsan@semyung.ac.kr