On the feasibility of South African coal waste for production of ‘FabSoil’, a Technosol

Filho, Juarez Ramos do Amaral; Firpo, Beatriz Alícia; Broadhurst, Jennifer L.; Harrison, Susan T.L.

doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2019.106059

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Other recent studies have created and tested technosols also on the basis of locally available materials to address local need. For example, Amaral-Filho et al [19] created base mixtures of coal waste and geogenic soil, supplemented with additional organic amendments, to create substrates for mine land reclamation. The general addition of organic amendments for improving degraded soils and promoting vegetation cover on poorly fertile land is well established [30] and represents good practice for soil creation.…”

Section: Optimising the Technosol Recipementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, a clear abundance of C&D-fines and organic waste base materials exist that could be utilised to create technosols. Such substrates have been variously produced and tested previously, but generally these have consisted of waste materials blended with extant soil [10,19,20], with few studies testing technosols produced without the input of geogenic soils [11]. Therefore, there is a paucity of detailed study of technosols produced solely from wastes in terms of mineralogy, geochemistry and plant growth performance, and it was thus deemed pertinent to conduct the following study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Geochemical and Agronomic Evaluation of Technosols Made from Construction and Demolition Fines Mixed with Green Waste Compost

et al. 2021

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Construction and demolition fines (C&D-fines) and green waste compost (GWC) are two commonly generated urban waste materials that represent repositories of geochemical value. Here technosols were produced from volumetric mixtures of these materials ranging from 0–100% C&D-fines, with the remaining proportion comprised of GWC. Agronomic assessment was carried out by way of pot and rhizobox plant growth experiments with ryegrass, barley and pea to determine germination, plant mass and rooting behaviours. Geochemical and mineralogical evaluation was achieved by soil pore water solution measurements combined with X-ray powder diffraction analyses respectively, to characterise the technosols and their distinct deviations from a reference agricultural geogenic soil (soil). The results demonstrated that germination, growth and root mass/surface area of vegetation were up to 80-fold greater after 30-days in the technosol composed of equal volumes of the two materials (50% C&D-fines: 50% GWC) compared to the soil. High concentrations of Ca and Mg in pore waters (550–800 mg·L−1) were dominant features of the technosols, in contrast to the soil (<50 mg·L−1), resulting from gypsum and calcite enrichment of the C&D-fines. In contrast, the GWC represented a source of soluble K (450–1000·mg·L−1). Highly elevated Ca concentrations in extended leaching tests of the C&D-fines reflected ongoing gypsum dissolution, whereas soluble Mg and K were rapidly depleted from the GWC. In summary, short-term performance of the technosols as plant growth substrates was strong despite their geochemical and mineralogical distinction from soil. Gleaning additional geochemical value from combining urban wastes in this way is potentially suited to myriad scenarios where geogenic soils are contaminated, sealed or otherwise absent. Further assessment will now be needed to determine the geochemical longevity of the technosols before wider scale applications can be recommended.

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Section: Optimising the Technosol Recipementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Geochemical and Agronomic Evaluation of Technosols Made from Construction and Demolition Fines Mixed with Green Waste Compost

et al. 2021

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“…Other structural materials have been used as soil matrix for constructed soils: terrestrial or glacially deposited sediments [63], aquatic sand and sediments from lakes, rivers or dams [87,88], bricks [42,47], concrete and demolition rubble [47], sand and recycled ferrihydrites [89], coal waste [90,91], mining wastes [65,69], ashes [92], recycled bentonites [93], crushed rock [94], usually with the addition of natural or native topsoils [90,93,94]. The excavated material from deep soil horizons could be also exploited for this purpose, due to their great availability in every country.…”

Section: Waste Materials Employed As Structural Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various types of organic materials are added to the inorganic matrix (Table 1) and (Figure 3), mostly compost from aerobic digestion of urban or green wastes [42,47,63,88,90,91,93], but also sewage or paper mill sludge [47,90,94], street sweeping wastes [47], green waste [42], furfural residues [92], peat [100], and biochar [101,102]. As for the inorganic structural materials, it is difficult to assess the a priori availability of each material but the recent legislative actions leading to greener industrial practices will probably tend to increase the available feedstocks for compost and digestate, as an example.…”

Section: Growing Materials From Wastesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructed Technosols: A Strategy toward a Circular Economy

et al. 2021

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Soil is a non-renewable natural resource. However, the current rates of soil usage and degradation have led to a loss of soil for agriculture, habitats, biodiversity, and to ecosystems problems. Urban and former industrial areas suffer particularly of these problems, and compensation measures to restore environmental quality include the renaturation of dismissed areas, de-sealing of surfaces, or the building of green infrastructures. In this framework, the development of methodologies for the creation of soils designed to mimic natural soil and suitable for vegetation growth, known as constructed soils or technosols, are here reviewed. The possible design choices and the starting materials have been described, using a circular economy approach, i.e., preferring non-contaminated wastes to non-renewable resources. Technosols appear to be a good solution to the problems of land degradation and urban green if using recycled wastes or by-products, as they can be an alternative to the remediation of contaminated sites and to importing fertile agricultural soil. Nevertheless, waste use requires analysis to ensure the salubrity of the starting materials. Moreover, materials produced on site or nearby minimize the cost and the environmental impact of transport, thus the involvement of local stakeholders in the urban land management must be encouraged.

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“…A two-stage desulphurisation flotation process has been developed to valorise ultrafine coal wastes [8,10]. The first stage of the flotation process, the focus of this paper, recovers clean coal from the waste while the second stage recovers pyrite into the small volume concentrate fraction, which results in a high volume, low-sulphur tailings that has reduced or no risk of acid generation; both these fractions can be re-purposed for other applications [9,[11][12][13][14]. This minimises or entirely avoids the waste formation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algal Lipids as Biocollector for Recovery of Coal from Fine Coal Waste by Froth Flotation

Harrison

Fagan-Endres

2020

Minerals

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Raw algal lipids (RALs) and their derivatives (fatty acid methyl esters; FAMEs) were investigated as biocollectors for the recovery of coal from ash-rich fine coal waste by froth flotation. Testing was done on fine coal discards from two South African sites—a high ash (50%), high sulphur (5.7%) sample and a lower ash (26%), low sulphur (0.91%) sample. The yield and recovery of combustibles on using biocollectors was similar to, or better than, with oleic acid, a polar collector demonstrated as a good collector in previous research. The RALs and FAMEs reduced the ash and sulphur content of the combustible fraction of the high ash-high sulphur sample to between 23–28% and 1.9–3.3%, respectively. The chemical modification of RALs to FAMEs provided potential for improving the selectivity of the recovery of combustibles. It also resulted in a change of the optimum operating pH, with RALs yielding better results at the natural pH of the sample (pH 2.7), while FAMEs performed best at pH 7.

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On the feasibility of South African coal waste for production of ‘FabSoil’, a Technosol

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

A Geochemical and Agronomic Evaluation of Technosols Made from Construction and Demolition Fines Mixed with Green Waste Compost

A Geochemical and Agronomic Evaluation of Technosols Made from Construction and Demolition Fines Mixed with Green Waste Compost

Constructed Technosols: A Strategy toward a Circular Economy

Algal Lipids as Biocollector for Recovery of Coal from Fine Coal Waste by Froth Flotation

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