Application of EDTA for Remediation of Pb Contaminated Bentonite by the Use of Soil Washing Method

The remediation of heavy metal contaminated soils is one of the known challenges of researches in many industrial countries. The use of EDTA (Na2EDTA.2H2O) is one of the common soil-washing methods. In spite of several research conducted on this subject, the optimization of the use of EDTA for heavy metal removal from contaminated soils, specifically soils with relatively high surface area, are not well addressed in the literature. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the optimization of the use of EDTA in remediation of Pb-contaminated bentonite. To achieve the above mentioned objective, bentonite samples were laboratory contaminated with different concentrations of lead nitrate. Lead nitrate at concentrations of 0.001, 0.005, 0.01, 0.5 and 0.7 mol/l (1, 5, 10, 50 and 70 cmol/kg-soil) was used to laboratory contaminate bentonite. After drying the contaminated samples, they were exposed to different concentrations of EDTA. EDTA at concentrations of 0.001, 0.005, 0.01, 0.05, and 0.1 mol/l (1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 cmol/kg-soil) was used in 1:10 soil:electrolyte ratio in accordance to EPA. For sample preparation, 20 ml of EDTA at the required concentration was added to 2 grams of a dried contaminated bentonite. Samples were shaken for 2 hours on a horizontal shaker. Then, they were kept for 96 hours to reach equilibrium. In these 96 hours of equilibrium, soil samples in centrifuge tubes were shaken 2 hours in each 24 hours. Finally, samples were centrifuged with 4000 rpm to separate the solid and electrolyte. Then, the efficiency of Pb removal from samples was measured by analyzing the electrolyte. It should be emphasized that to prevent precipitation of lead ions in electrolyte, nitric acid was added to electrolyte to keep the pH less than 2. The achieved results show that the quantity of removed Pb ions by the application of EDTA is relatively equal to the concentration of applied EDTA. In other words, as the 1 , the quantity of lead removal by EDTA is equal to EDTA concentration. This quantity of lead removal is neither a function of lead concentration nor to the number of soil washing by EDTA. In addition, since the quantity of removed Pb is only a function of EDTA/Pb ratio, therefore such a removal is not dependent to the pH variations caused by different concentrations of Pb or EDTA. This approves that the high buffering capacity of bentonite in comparison to other variables of environment has the minimum impact on the interaction process of EDTA and heavy metal contaminated bentonite.