Upcycling of Fe-bearing sludge: preparation of erdite-bearing particles for treating pharmaceutical manufacture wastewater

Groundwater treatment sludge is a type of solid waste with 9.0–28.9% wt.% Fe content and is precipitated in large quantity from backwash wastewater in groundwater treatment. The sludge is mainly composed of fine particles containing Fe, Si and Al oxides, such as ferrihydrite, quartz and boehmite. The Fe oxides mostly originate from the oxidation of ferrous Fe in groundwater, whilst the silicate/aluminium compounds mainly originate from the broken quartz sand filter in the backwash step. In general, the sludge is firstly coagulated, dewatered by filter pressing and finally undergoes harmless solidification before it is sent to landfills. However, this process is costly (approximately US$66.1/t) and complicated. In this study, groundwater treatment sludge was effectively recycled to prepare novel erdite-bearing particles via a one-step hydrothermal method by adding only Na(2)S·9H(2)O. After hydrothermal treatment, the quartz and boehmite of the sludge were dissolved and recrystallised to sodalite, whilst ferrihydrite was converted to an erdite nanorod at 160 °C and a hematite at 240 °C. SP160 was prepared as fine nanorod particles with 200 nm diameter and 2–5 μm length at a hydrothermal temperature of 160 °C. Nearly 100% OTC and its derivatives in pharmaceutical manufacture wastewater were removed by adding 0.1 g SP160. The major mechanism for the removal was the spontaneous hydrolysis of erdite in SP160 to generate Fe oxyhydroxide and use many hydroxyl groups for coordinating OTC and its derivatives. This study presents a novel method for the resource reutilisation of waste groundwater treatment sludge and reports efficient erdite-bearing particles for pharmaceutical manufacture wastewater treatment.