Mechanism of delayed leaching of heavy metals from naturally contaminated soils

Abstract

Naturally contaminated soils that contain contaminants deep within the particles may show delayed leaching. To incorporate this, a novel approach for predicting the distribution of contaminants, both in the soil particle and surrounding liquid, is achieved using the finite difference method. The approach is named the 'intraparticle pore-diffusion model' and is applied to simulate the batch leaching test of heavy metal contaminated soils. Intraparticle diffusion and sorption equilibrium are considered. The desorption phenomena of heavy metal from soil particles are considered as a one-dimensional, polar-symmetric problem in the spherical coordinate system by supposing soil particles to be porous, perfect spheres. The results indicate that soil constituted of larger particles leach more contaminants at a certain time and faster for a certain leaching amount.

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