Preparation and Characterization of Porous Hematite through Thermal Decomposition of a Goethite Concentrate

In this work, the thermal decomposition of a goethite concentrate from an iron ore concentration plant was studied in order to develop an economic process of preparing porous hematite as an effective adsorbent for the treatment of wastewater containing heavy metals. This study was performed by means of the measurements of X-ray diffraction (XRD), physical adsorption, and thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) for the decomposition process and the characterization of the prepared porous hematite. The experimental results showed that the prepared porous hematite mainly consisted of micropores, and considerably increased the specific surface area and pore volume. The mechanism might be attributed to the dehydration and dehydroxylation of goethite in the thermal treatment. It has been found that calcinating temperature was the predominant factor in the preparation of the porous hematite. Also, residence time in the calcinations greatly affected the pore characterization of the porous hematite.