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Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tunghai University, Taichung City 407 Taiwan
Department of Environmental Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan City 701, Taiwan
Sustainable Environment Research Center, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan City 701, Taiwan
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Keywords:
Sintering
Bloating process
Sediment recycling
Lightweight aggregate
Fe K-edge XANES
a b s t r a c t
Sediment sampled from Taichung Harbor was mixed with local reservoir sediment at different weight
ratios to prepare lightweight aggregate at 1050, 1100, and 1150 C. A pressure of 3000 or 5000 psi was
used to shape the powder mixtures into pellets before the heating processes. The results indicate that
the leaching levels of trace metals from the lightweight aggregate samples are considerably reduced to
levels less than Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration regulatory limits. Increasing nal process temperature tends to reduce the bulk density and crushing intensity of lightweight aggregate with a
concomitant increase in water sorption capability. Lightweight aggregate with the lowest bulk density,
0.49 g cm 3 for the 5000 psi sample, was obtained with the heating process to 1150 C. Based on the
X-ray absorption near edge structure results, FeSO4 decomposition with a concomitant release of SOx
(x = 2, 3) is suggested to play an important role for the bloating process in present study.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
There has been extensive usage of lightweight aggregate (LWA)
materials in civil engineering, such as construction of tall building
to achieve the purpose of weight lessening, without losing the
function as thermal insulator and sonic barrier. The LWA materials
have also been applied to road and bridge construction for transportation. Other applications include soil engineering, gardening,
and ltering (Cheeseman et al., 2005). Natural resources used for
manufacturing LWA materials cover the ashes from incinerator
and coal power plant, volcanic ash, pumice, siliceous rock, shale,
and others (Cheeseman et al., 2005; Chiou et al., 2006; Hossain,
2004; Mladenovic et al., 2004). However, in most industrialized
and many developing countries, because the raw materials from
natural environment for the manufactures of LWA have been
depleting and because there is increasing public concerns on the
environmental impact arising from mining the natural raw materials, there is a worldwide tendency towards using waste as a substitute for the natural raw materials (Cheeseman et al., 2005). It has
been pointed out that waste materials containing shale, clay, slag,
sediment, and sewage sludge can be employed for the purpose of
manufacturing lightweight aggregate on condition that the chemical composition and particle size distribution are suitable for the
sintering and vesicant processes to take place in desired time order
when heated from room temperature to a typical high temperature, such as 11501200 C (Holm and Valsangkar, 1993). Riley
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 42 359 1368; fax: +886 42 359 6858.
E-mail address: yulin@thu.edu.tw (Y.-L. Wei).
0025-326X/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2008.03.033
868
the sintering and vesicant processes. Molecular environmental science with XAS technique has emerged to provide information
needed for a long-term solution of environmental remediation
and waste management (US DOE, 1995). An XAS spectrum, including X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and extended Xray absorption ne structure (EXAFS), is capable of revealing speciation, distribution, form transformations, and mobility of target
metal (US DOE, 1995). The aim of this study is to study the feasibility of recycling sediment from Taichung Harbor of Taiwan as a raw
material for manufacturing LWA and to apply XAS technique to
investigate the change of Fe speciation prior to and after the sintering and vesicant processes.
2. Experimental methods
The experimental owchart is depicted in Fig. 1. Two sediments
were sampled: one from Taichung Harbor of Taiwan and the other
from a local reservoir. The reservoir sediment has been well studied and it is regarded as a satisfactory raw material for commercially manufacturing LWA. The reservoir sediment used in this
study is intended for comparison with the harbor sediment. Prior
to forming the pellet by the use of a pressure shaping method,
the sediment sampled from Taichung Harbor was thoroughly
end-to-end mixed with the local reservoir sediment at ve different weight ratios (100:0, 80:20, 60:40, 40:60, 20:80, and 0:100)
in a mixer which rotated at a speed of 30 rpm for 24 h. Preweighed amount of the sediment mixture was then loaded into a
stainless-steel holder, and pressurized into a disk-like dense pellet
by the use of a pressure shaping machine which is equipped with a
pressure gauge. Two different pressures, 3000 and 5000 psi, were
applied to the sediment mixtures to shape them into dense pellets.
The sizes of the dense pellets (8.00 g in weight) shaped with 3000
and 5000 psi are 4.1 and 3.6 cm3, respectively. To successfully prepare lightweight aggregate through sintering and vesicant pro-
Raw sediments
Dried at 105 C
Characterization
Ground to < 50mesh
of raw materials
with various
instruments
869
1050 C
1100 C
1150 C
3000
0
20
40
60
80
100
1.19
0.84
0.65
0.55
0.51
0.28
0.37
0.35
0.36
0.29
0.22
0.26
0.24
0.20
0.23
0.10
0.22
0.18
0
20
40
60
80
100
0.12
0.13
ND
ND
ND
0.13
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
ND
5000
ND: <0.092 mg L
40
20
20
0
100
0
100
80
80
60
60
40
40
20
20
0
59
0
59
011
90
11
90
-2
00
0
40
7-
Shaping pressure
(psi)
60
Cumulative Weight Percentage
29
Table 2
Pb TCLP concentration from all lightweight aggregate samples
60
74
-1
49
14
929
7
80
-7
4
80
28.90%
7.57%
4.05%
1.02%
2.55%
0.32%
0.18%
212.8 mg kg 1
0.037 mg kg 1
6.46 mg kg 1
ND
ND
ND
5.72%
53
31.53%
7.67%
4.32%
2.52%
1.15%
0.51%
0.59%
84.6 mg kg 1
0.034 mg kg 1
6.69 mg kg 1
ND
ND
ND
4.17%
100
25
Sia
Al
Fe
K
Na
Ti
Ca
Pb
Hg
As
Cd
Cu
Cr
LOIb
100
<
2
Harbor sediment
Reservoir sediment
Element
Fig. 2. Particle size distribution of sediments sampled from a local reservoir (top
panel) and Taichung Harbor (bottom) in Taiwan.
10
3000 psi
1050 oC
1100 oC
1150 oC
10
6
5000 psi
9
1050 oC
o
1100 C
1150 oC
6
0
20
40
60
80
100
1050 oC
1100 oC
3000 psi
1150 oC
0
1050 oC
1100 oC
5000 psi
1150 oC
0
0
20
40
60
80
100
the processes at 1150 C: 0.49 and 0.69 g cm 3 for the 5000- and
3000 psi samples, respectively. It is noted that the generally
acceptable bulk density of LWA is <2.0 g cm 3 and LWA with different bulk density has various practical applications. This gure
shows that the LWA bulk density generally decreases with increasing fraction of reservoir sediment, because the average particle size
of the reservoir sediment is smaller than the harbor sediment; in
other words, the pellets containing more fraction of reservoir sediment are more closely packed. This would favor encapsulation of
the gases produced during the bloating process, leading to less bulk
density; however such trend is not observed for the results associated with 3000 psi and 1050 C (see the upmost curve in Fig. 4). To
explain this exceptional observation, we suggest that the benet of
ner particle size for easier sintering might have been offset by
both lower shaping pressure (3000 psi) and the richer Si + Al + Ca
content in the reservoir sediment (see Table 1). Note that SiO2,
Al2O3, and CaO all have relatively high melting point, consequently
greater content of these constituents would result in slower sintering reaction; thereby the gases generated by the bloating reaction
have more opportunity to slip out to the atmosphere through the
still-open interparticle space.
The effect of pellet shaping pressure on the LWA bulk density is
also indicated in Fig. 4. A general trend of decreasing bulk density
with increased shaping pressure is observed. This trend can be explained in a simple way by the fact that particles closer to each
other are easier to be brought together and sintered at elevated
temperature. Thus, the pellets shaped with greater shaping pressure would take less time to form the sintered layer (i.e., the shell)
which is glassy and considerably smooth. Once the shell is formed,
the gases generated during the subsequent vesicant process would
expand the shell dimension and the core region becomes porous
with the gases caught inside, resulting in less density of the light
aggregate.
16
14
3000 psi
1050 oC
12
1100 oC
1150 oC
10
870
8
6
4
16
14
5000 psi
1050 oC
12
1100 oC
1150 oC
10
8
6
4
0
20
40
60
80
100
871
3500
2.0
1.5
3000 psi
1050 oC
3000
1.0
0.5
o
1100 C
0.0
2.0
2500
2000
1500
1000
5000 psi
3000
2500
2000
40
60
80
0.0
2.0
1050 oC-shell
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
2.0
1150 oC-core
1.5
1.0
0.5
1150 oC-shell
1.0
1000
20
0.5
1.5
1100 oC
0
1.0
0.0
2.0
1050 oC
1500
1050 oC-core
1.5
0.5
100
0.0
7.12
7.16
7.18
7.12
7.14
7.16
7.18
Fig. 7. XANES spectra (left) and their corresponding rst-derivative spectra (right)
from harbor sediment and lightweight aggregates prepared with sintering at 1050
and 1150 C. The vertical dotted lines running through each panels are intended for
easier comparison among various samples.
ature (1100 C) results in less crushing intensity, which is suggested to be due to the rigorous bloating process at 1100 C, thereby providing the vesicant gases with enough energy to escape to
the atmosphere by tunneling through the sintered shell with some
tiny pores left behind on the glassy surface. In addition, because
the crushing intensities for all 1150 C LWA samples are less than
the minimum detection limit of the auto-compressor device,
166 psi, therefore being excluded from Fig. 6. Despite the considerably lower crushing intensity for the 1150 C LWA samples than all
samples manufactured at 1050 and 1100 C (i.e., 17273046 psi),
the 1150 C LWA samples, when properly incorporated into cement, may be able to effectively reduce the total density of the cement specimen while still retaining reasonable crushing strength
for the LWA-incorporated cement specimen because the strength
may be contributed by cement.
Fig. 7 presents the Fe K-edge XANES spectra from the LWA samples prepared from harbor sediment (not containing reservoir sediment). Each LWA sample was divided into two parts: shell and
core regions. The shell region corresponds to the glassy surface,
and the core region represents the bloating part. The main edge
peak (as indicated by the arrow in each panel) in the XANES spectra from all LWA samples, except the 1050 C-core, shifts toward
greater photon energy, indicating an increase in average oxidation
state of Fe. This is in contrast to the generally accepted mechanism
that during the vesicant process, the average oxidation state of Fe
decreases due to the transformation of Fe2O3 into Fe3O4, FeO, and
O2. Fig. 8 shows the results based on the simulation of XANES spectrum from raw harbor sediment using WinXAS program (Ressler,
1998). The Fe speciation in raw harbor sediment consists of
36.8% Fe2O3, 30.1% Fe3O4, 13.4% FeO, and 19.7% FeSO4. As indicated
in Fig. 7, the average oxidation state of Fe tends to increase after
7.14
2.0
harbor sediment
1.5
1.0
0.5
Fe2O3 36.8 %
FeO 13.4 %
Fe3O4 30.1 %
FeSO4 19.7 %
0.0
7.12
7.14
7.16
7.18
the sintering and bloating processes, we suggest that FeSO4 decomposition with a concomitant release of SOx might have played an
important role for the bloating process in present study. Noted that
this study also attempted to simulate other XANES spectra for
obtaining Fe speciation in LWA samples, however it is unsuccessful
due to the unavailability of a complete set of Fe reference
872
Acknowledgments
We thank Professor J.-F. Lee and the staffs of NSRRC of Taiwan
for their assistance in the XAS experiment. This study was sponsored by National Science Council of Taiwan through the contract
NSC 95-2221-E-029-010-MY2.
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