Leaching behavior of heavy metals in coal gasification residuals

The system of dynamic leaching was designed for samples of a coal gasification residual from a coalto- methanol plant in northwestern China in order to investigate the leaching behavior of four potentially hazardous elements – Hg, Cr, As, and Pb – in the coal gasification residual and investigate the impacts of the leaching time, size of the samples, and pH of the leaching solution on the leaching behavior of elements. The concentrations of elements in the leachate samples were all determined by inductively coupled plasmamass atomic spectrometry (ICP-MS). The results showed that the leaching time, size of the samples, and pH of the leaching solution played an important role in affecting the leaching behavior of the selected elements from the coal residual samples. All trends were in decreasing order of significance as the leaching time went on and most leached concentrations reached the maximum at the initial stage of leaching experiments (from hours 0 to 4) accounting for 94.44%. The 80-mesh sample had the different leaching curve from the 10-mesh and 40-mesh samples for the same element because different forms of the heavy metals existed on the different-size samples.