Elucidation of the arsenic removal mechanism in aqueous solution with metallurgical waste

We present the elucidation mechanism of arsenite removal with slags through the evaluation of five materials: A1, C1, N1 (steel industry), M1 (lead industry), and M2 (iron industry), all of them with different surface areas pore diameter, and chemical and mineralogical composition. The slags were physically characterized, determining surface area (1.6 to 10 m2/g) and zero charge point (5.5); chemically by X ray fluo-rescence (XRF) mainly identifying Si, Ca and Fe, and the release of potentially toxic elements by leaching at different pH ' s (5, 7 and 9) was ruled out. The mineralogy de-termined by X ray difraction (XRD) showed iron compounds. The removal of arsenite was evaluated at laboratory level by means of a 2k experimental design in syntheti-cally contaminated samples. Agitation time, amount of slag and initial concentration of arsenite were evaluated. The optimal removal conditions were: 250 mg of slag, 10 mg/L of arsenite, and agitation time of 60 min. The C1 slag removed more than 90 % of the initial arsenite, and the proposed fixation mechanism could be a chemi-sorption at heterogeneous sites, as well as through intraparticle diffusion. XRD and infrarred (IR) spectroscopy analyses of the slag after arsenic fixation showed that there is a direct interaction of arsenite with iron.