Technological proposals for recycling industrial wastes for environmental applications

Abstract

A two-fold objective is proposed for this research: removing hazardous and unpleasant wastes and mitigating the emissions of green house gasses in the atmosphere. Thus, the first aim of this work is to identify, characterize and recycle industrial wastes with high contents of calcium or sodium. This involves synthesizing materials with the ability for CO 2 sequestration as preliminary work for designing industrial processes, which involve a reduction of CO 2 emissions. In this regard, phosphogypsum from the fertilizer industry and liquid wastes from the green olive and bauxite industries have been considered as precursors. Following a very simple procedure, Ca-bearing phosphogypsum wastes are mixed with Na-bearing liquid wastes in order to obtain a harmless liquid phase and an active solid phase, which may act as a carbon sequestration agent. In this way, wastes, which are unable to fix CO 2 by themselves, can be successfully turned into effective CO 2 sinks. The CO 2 sequestration efficiency and the CO 2 fixation power of the procedure based on these wastes are assessed.