Soil decontamination at the Montevecchio-Levante mine site with experimental washing and leaching techniques

The soils in the neighbourhood of the Rio Montevecchio-Sitzerri, a stream that flows in the valley below the tailings pond of the Montevecchio-Levante mineral processing plant (SW Sardinia, Italy) are severely contaminated by heavy metals, to the extent that traditional land uses are compromised. Consequently urgent measures are needed both to abate the pollution at source and rehabilitate the contaminated land. This paper is concerned with the problem of soil decontamination using washing and leaching techniques. Laboratory experiments have been conducted in mechanically agitated reactors, using citric acid and acetic acid solutions and brine of hydrochloric acid and calcium chloride. The influence of both reagent concentration and solid-to-liquid ratio has been assessed, and in the most significant cases, the attack kinetics has been determined. The tests showed the brine to be the most effective for removing metals from the soils. Based on the findings of the investigations, the possibility of decontamination by heap leaching has been simulated in the laboratory using the column technique.