doi: 10.7763/IJESD.2012.V3.185
Fate of Metals in Coal Fly Ash Ponds
Lokeshappa B1,2
,
Anil Kumar Dikshit3,4
- 1Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
- 2the Department of Studies in Civil Engineering, University BDT College of Engineering, Davangere, Karnataka, India
- 3Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
- 4School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Abstract
The coal fly ashes contain toxic metals much higher concentrations than soil background levels that can be released into the environment through coal combustion processes. Disposal of coal fly ash in open and unlined ash ponds causes serious adverse environmental impacts to its elevated metals concentration and leaching into soils and groundwater. In the present research work, the water columns above the settled ash were sampled and cores of ash were collected over the course of 11 months from one class C and two class F ashes containing laboratory scale ash ponds. Samples were analysed for pH and metals. The arsenic, chromium were found to increase with aging of ash ponds containing class F ash while the concentration of all metals deceased in ash pond with class C ash. However, the free water column metals concentration was above 150 pbb, way above drinking water standard.
Keywords
- Ash pond
- fly ash
- metals
- leaching
- thermal power plant
How to Cite
Lokeshappa B and Anil Kumar Dikshit, "Fate of Metals in Coal Fly Ash Ponds," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 43-48, 2012. https://doi.org/10.7763/IJESD.2012.V3.185
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2012 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).