Reusing of furnace bottom ash as an adsorbent for phosphate removal from water

Abstract

Phosphate is a common chemical element that resides extensively in the Earth's crust, and its presence in water results in eutrophication of water. Therefore, many studies were devoted to study the ability of phosphate removal from water and wastewater using different treatment methods. Recent studies have suggested that filtration treatment techniques are effective for phosphate removal with one disadvantage which is the high cost of industrial filtration materials used. As a result, recent studies are concentrating on minimizing the operational costs of the filtration method by using cost-effective alternatives. This study is focusing on the efficiency of using the wastes of the iron industry (furnaces bottom ashes (FBAs)) for phosphates elimination from synthetic water. Several operational conditions which are detention times, FBAs doses, and phosphate concentrations, were studied to obtain the best conditions which ensure the best possible removal rate and a reasonable operational cost. The results indicated that FBAs are an efficient alternative for phosphate removal with an optimum removal rate of 88.9% with 31 min retention time, phosphate concentration of 5 mg/L, and 550 mg/L FBAs doses. The results obtained were used to construct a model with high reliability at R² = 0.967.