Red mud, a highly alkaline waste generated in the production of alumina from bauxite, ie. the Bayer process, can be used as a valuable feedstock for industrial CO2 capture. In the presented master's thesis, we wanted to examine the potential of red mud for carbon sequestration to Fe2+ from hematite, which is the main component of red mud. In order to determine the mineral and chemical composition, samples of red mud from a landfill in Podgorica, Montenegro, with fractions below 63 μm were analyzed with X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The laser granulometric analysis was performed to determine the grain size distribution. An economically feasible method for the reduction of iron from hematite in red mud is bioleaching with bacteria, thus we conducted an experiment using Bacillus spp. and Pseudomonas spp. During bacterial metabolism, various organic acids are produced that form complexes with metal ions. One of those is lactic acid, therefore mineralization experiments were performed on iron lactate. We performed 3 reactions with lactate: under atmospheric conditions, under pressure conditions in deionized water, and under pressure conditions in deionized degassed water. The resulting products were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and Mössbauer spectroscopy.
It was found that an oxygen-free environment is essential for the reaction of lactate with CO2 in solution. Furthermore, it is important to remove oxygen from the water, as dissolved oxygen can cause iron oxidation and thus prevent the binding of CO2. For future work, reaction of CO2 with acids, such as e.g. gluconate and acetate, which are formed during the conversion of other sugars during bacterial metabolism, may be considered.
Preliminary results of the iron reduction by bacteria have shown that bioleaching is taking place, which is a promising and cost-effective method, suitable for further research in this area. Due to the high content of hematite in red mud and together with a correspondingly low cost of reducing Fe3+ to Fe2+ in hematite, red mud has a huge potential for industrial CO2 mineralization. Further research into economically viable methods for iron reduction is needed.
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