Determination of the dissolution rate of hazardous jarosites in different conditions using the shrinking core kinetic model

Abstract

The presence of hazardous jarosites causes a serious environmental problems, releasing potentially toxic elements, principally heavy metals such as Pb, As, Tl, Cr among others to the environment. Thus, the dissolution process of jarosites has to be monitored to assess the environmental impact. In the present work, the different hazardous jarosites were prepared, and characterized by analytical techniques (XRD, SEM, EDS, etc.), and the composition of jarosites was determined by induction-coupled plasma spectroscopy (ICP). Shrinking core kinetic model (SCKM) was employed to understand the stability of hazardous jarosites, studying a complete kinetic analysis of the jarosite dissolution process under different conditions (temperatures and pH). The results show that temperature has the highest effect on stability followed by pH, requiring extreme parameters for high dissolution. The batch experiments show that the results are in good agreement with the SCKM forming a solid layer as by-products. The chemical reaction, i.e. dissolution process performs through mostly controlling stage at extreme pH values and then moved to mass transport in the fluid layer. After analyzing the results, a kinetic equation has been proposed to describe adequately the dissolution process, and it predicts the lifetime of the hazardous jarosites.

Keywords: Dissolution rates; Hazardous jarosite; Jarosite lifetime; Kinetic analysis; Shrinking core kinetic model.