BONE MEAL AS ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT FOR ACIDIC AND METAL CONTAMINATED ACID MINE DRAINAGE WATER EFFLUENT: LAB SCALE

Abstract

The typical methods of treatment for acidic and metal contaminated water effluent such as the Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) will always focus on either civil engineering methods, such as disposal, excavation, drainage and encapsulation or process based technologies such as effluent washing and treatment. These techniques are not environmental friendly, costly and unsustainable, thus environmental damaging. Nowadays, there is a growing need for an alternative remediation treatment that is innovative and more natural in order to prevent pollution in the environment. Therefore, in this study, a new alternative treatment, that is more organic, biodegradable and cost effective, using bone meal was presented. In this research, bone meal comprising of chicken bones were used as an alternative passive treatment to determine its potential in neutralizing and removing heavy metals from the abandoned cooper mine, Mamut Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) waste water effluent. A pretreatment process for bone meal was performed by incineration process where it was heated up in the furnace at 500°C for 24 h after it was cleaned, crushed, boiled and dried. Batch experiment test has been carried out to test whether the selected bone meal sizes 45, 75 and 150 µm was able to neutralize the AMD Mamut water samples. Inductive Plasma Couple-Atomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-AES) test was carried out to test the concentration of the heavy metals before and after the treatment. The surface morphology of bone meal was examined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Enlargement of pores after the neutralization treatment was seen on the surface morphology of the bone meal by SEM analyses. A significant rising of pH from 2.98 to 5.69 within 6 h 30 min was observed during neutralization process and 99% removal of Fe, Zn, Al, Cu and 36% removal of Mg concentration was achieved after the treatment through the neutralization treatment of the AMD waste water effluent. The results from this study conclude that bone meal has the potential to neutralize and remove heavy metals from acidic and metal contaminated AMD waste water effluent.