Understanding Your Market Needs
Large volumes of industrial sludge and contaminated soils are treated in Europe. In line with the Circular Economy concept, industrial sludge can be reused in industry, construction and remediation or it can be recovered as fuels. Environmental burdens, whatever their type and origin, all require treatment to control their adverse environmental impacts.
European industry generates large volumes of different waste types. Some of them have also been stored in hazardous landfills or deposits over many decades. Industrial sludge, either from everyday operation or from old deposits, can be reused in industry, construction and remediation works or it can be recovered as solid fuels. Whatever their type and origin, all these materials require treatment to control their adverse environmental impacts. Lime and lime-based binders are used for complex treatment of industrial sludge, waste and by-products.
Solutions to Meet Your Needs
Lime provides multiple effects in industrial sludge and contaminated soil treatment:
- Neutralizing free acids in chemical waste and forming solid precipitated salts.
- Decreasing the solubility of most contaminants in sludge or polluted soils (mainly heavy metals), thanks to alkali pH, and preventing these contaminants from leaching to the environment.
- Stabilizing these materials, thanks to pozzolanic reactions between lime and clay minerals in polluted soils or active silica/alumina in mineral sludge, thus forming an impermeable matrix, and contributing to contaminants leaching blockage.
- Drying and solidifying the sludge, thanks to exothermic hydration of CaO.
Treatment with milk-of-lime can provide dust-free stabilization at dry sites.
In special cases, customized lime-containing binders combine the effects above with increased cementitious reaction of hydraulic admixtures. This results in stable and durable final products, wherever required.
Carmeuse offers the StabiCalco® product range for efficient treatment of industrial sludge and polluted soils in optimum quality, high performance and a best process economy.