Carbon-Dioxide and Hydrogen-Sulfide Removal from Simulated Landfill Gas Using Steel Slag
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 12
Abstract
Municipal solid waste landfills are a source of major greenhouse gases such as methane () and carbon dioxide () and emit a trace amount of hydrogen sulfide (). Recently, steel slag has extensively been used for mineral sequestration to minimize the releases to the atmosphere. This study explores the potential of basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel slag to simultaneously remove and from landfill gas (LFG). Various batch and column tests were conducted to evaluate the and removal potential of the BOF slag under various conditions such as moisture content and particle size of the BOF slag. The three different particle sizes of BOF slag (coarse, as-is, and fine) were exposed to continuous flow of a synthetic LFG [50% , 48.25% , and 1.75% by volume ()] in a column reactor to evaluate the effect of particle size on and removal capacity of the slag. Similarly, the BOF slag was exposed to synthetic LFG as well as 20% () of alone in batch reactors at varying moisture contents (10%–30% by weight) to evaluate the effect of moisture content on the and removal capacity of the slag. A significant removal of BOF slag and removal of 76 g BOF slag were obtained in the batch reactor. The fine BOF slag () showed the maximum removal (300 g BOF slag) and removal (38 g BOF slag) upon exposure to continuous synthetic LFG flow in the column reactor. The quantitative X-ray diffraction (QXRD) analysis showed the highest increase in carbon ( BOF slag) and sulfur ( BOF slag) contents in the fine BOF slag, which was consistent with the mass balance of carbon and sulfur from and uptake in column tests. The major reaction product with was elemental sulfur depicted by the significant increase in the sulfur content in the X-ray fluorescence analysis. The key minerals involved in carbonation reactions were lime, portlandite, and larnite, as these minerals showed significant reduction in weight percentage (100%, 82%, and 80%, respectively) in the QXRD analysis. Overall, BOF slag showed promising results in mitigating and from LFG.
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Data Availability Statement
All data generated during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This project is funded by the US National Science Foundation (grant CMMI # 1724773), which is gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Phoenix Services, LLC, is acknowledged for being an industrial partner on this project and providing slag samples for the experiments. Pittsburgh Mineral and Environmental Technology, Inc. and UIC Electron Microscopy Core facility are greatly acknowledged for providing services for sample analysis in this project.
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Received: May 3, 2020
Accepted: Jul 29, 2020
Published online: Oct 6, 2020
Published in print: Dec 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Mar 6, 2021
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