China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Exploring efficient treatment methods and low-cost treatment material for copper-polluted water resources has been forefront research topics of the academia. The desulfurization slag of molten iron pretreatment (KR desulfurization slag) has been widely used as the adsorbent for wastewater treatment in recent years because of its small grain size, small aperture size and large specific surface area. In this paper, the desulfurization slag of molten iron pretreatment in an iron and steel enterprise in Jiangsu was used as the adsorbent to study the adsorption performance of Cu²⁺ ions, and investigate the effects of the desulfurization slag amount, adsorption time, initial concentration of Cu²⁺ ions and reaction temperature on the adsorption performance. The dynamic and isothermal adsorption models were analyzed according to the test results. The research results show that the desulfurization slag has good adsorption performance on Cu²⁺ ions. The comparatively good treatment conditions for wastewater containing Cu²⁺ are: 4g/L desulfurization slag, the temperature about 30℃, the concentration of Cu²⁺ in wastewater 20mg/L, and the treatment duration 2h. Under such conditions, the adsorption rate reaches 94.14%. The results of adsorption dynamics and adsorption isotherm model show that the adsorption curve of Cu²⁺ ions by desulfurization slag conforms to pseudo-first reaction kinetics model and Freundlich isotherm adsorption model, that is, the adsorption rate of Cu²⁺ ions by desulfurization slag is greatly affected by diffusion and belongs to the adsorption process of complex adsorption surface.