Production of Alum from Bauxite Waste from Awaso mine

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Date
2013
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Abstract
Turbidity and colour has been one of the major challenges facing most Water treatment plants in Ghana. The effect of high levels of turbidity is the increase in the cost of production. The most efficient way of removing and reducing turbidity and colour is by the application of coagulants, which is mainly alum in Africa. Several methods have been established for the production of alum; the most efficient one has been determined to be the use of an acid to digest the bauxite waste. This method has been chosen to be the most efficient because it is simple and cost effective. It has been proven that a significant percentage of budgetary allocation for the treatment of water mostly in Africa and developing countries goes into the procurement of alum. The focus of this study is to determine a protocol that can be effective, efficient and cost less in the production of alum from bauxite waste. The environmental friendliness of the protocol developed was also very important and vital to the work and duly investigated. One of the most important variables also investigated was the molecular characteristic of the alum produced using an X ray diffractometer. This study developed a protocol, which leads to the production of alum from bauxite waste; the most effective protocol was the use of 165ml of sulphuric acid as the acid for digesting the bauxite waste, which was done strongly under refluxing conditions. The alum produced from the bauxite waste performed comparably well to the commercial Alum. It was also realized that for every 20g of bauxite used to produce alum using the white sample protocol about 1159g of alum is produced at a cost of 35Ghana cedis, which is, cheaper than the commercially available alum at a current market price of 80 Ghana cedis. The disposal of the sludge produced after filtration was highly acidic so the introduction of potash into the sludge before disposal was used as the means of reducing the acidic rate of the sludge. Using the X ray diffractometer and Jar test it was established that the alum produced from the lab performed comparably well as against the commercial alum. In the residual aluminium and sulphate test, the alum produced performed better than the commercial alum.
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A Thesis submitted to the Department of Civil Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science in Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation,
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