Abstract

In Japan, due to the public resistance of the nuclear power plants, the general trend is to generate power by using the coal. This means that huge amount of fly ash will be accumulated in the power plants due to the lack of safe reclamation sites. Accordingly, this paper presents an experimental study that evaluates the adsorption characteristics of fly ash when used as a filter medium in places where the groundwater is likely to be polluted. Previous studies show that fly ash is a good adsorbent of harmful chemicals. In this paper, some of the most harmful chemicals were allowed to pass through a fly ash packed column at different lengths with the aid of micro pump that can regulate the discharged volume in specific intervals of time. An ultraviolet (UV) spectrometry, atomic absorption spectrometry and capillary ion analysis were done to evaluate the adsorption efficiency of the fly ash.  The harmful chemicals used in this research were mercury, sodium cyanide, and tetrachloroethylene. After analyzing the outcome of these harmful chemicals results show that the fly ash is a good adsorbent and can decrease the concentration of the harmful chemicals to some acceptable values. Results also show that, for the scope of this study, adsorption efficiency increases as a result of the increased mass transfer units in proportionality with the length of the columns.

Key words: Adsorption, fly ash, hazardous chemicals, packed column, adsorbent.