Reduction of pollution caused by smoke from brick factories using a water system and reuse of water from brick production

Abstract

Air pollution is an important contemporary issue and any attempt to mitigate pollution and the environmental impacts is considered significant. In Iraq, dark oil is used as the essential fuel for brick factories. Incomplete burning of this fuel discharges a black smoke, which contains substantial amounts of soot especially at the beginning of any operation. The main objective of this study is to investigate use of a system of spraying water to treat the black smoke that is emitted by brick factories, to reduce the pollution and reuse the industrially-generated black wastewater (IBW). In this study, five samples of water were used, comprising one sample of clean water (control sample) and four samples of IBW, which contained different quantities of soot according to the quantity black oil burned. The burning operation was reproduced by burning0.5,1, 1.5, 2 liters of black oil respectively for the four samples used. The IBW was tested in a laboratory of the environmental authority and it was found to be free from any increased concentration of heavy metals except copper(Cu) and zinc(Zn) elements with a ratio 0.02 to 0.20 mg/l and 2.25 to 2.61 mg/l respectively. The PH was neutral at around 7.3. Further laboratory tests of the IBW showed that it contained sulfates at about 426 to 646 mg/l, nitrates of 12.5 to 31 mg/l, and chlorides at 151 to 178 mg/l. The results showed that reuse of the IBW generated by the brick industry did not affect the compression strength for any samples compared with the control sample (zero soot), which means the adopted system gave a very good results, reducing pollution with the same compressive brick strength.