Abstract:
In general, the industrial wastewater treatment sludge produced by chemical precipitation process are disposed by landfill because of its easiness. However, this process have many limits and the lost of some substances which can be reused. For this reason, the study about zinc dissolution from sludge by acid leaching, is interested. Sulphuric acid is used in this research. The effect of acid pH, an initial amount of sludge or % solid, a stirring rate and temperature on zinc dissolution is investigated. The experiment is divided into two parts which are a test of the synthetic sludge and the industrial sludge. From a result of the artificial sludge, it shows that zinc solubility varies against with pH and zinc can be completely dissolved when pH is in a range of 1 2. In addition, its reaction is pseudo first order reaction. A maximum solubility is reached when % solid is 1.4 % weight by volume. Furthermore, it reveals that the change in temperature slightly affects to zinc dissolution and this is endothermic reaction. On the stirring rate aspect, it is found that the stirring speed is no effect on zinc dissolution. The test of the authentic sludge shows that the tendency of zinc dissolution is likely to synthetic sludge but an amount of dissolved zinc is less than the other. At the equilibrium, zinc solubility is found 25 % only. The kinetic study indicates that the dissolution mechanism of the synthetic sludge is controlled by the reaction step while the industrial sludge is controlled by 2 steps, the reaction and diffusion step.