Abstract
East Kazakhstan region is the center of non-ferrous metallurgy of the Republic of Kazakhstan. There are large metallurgical enterprises in the region that pollute ground and surface waters with heavy metals. Wastewater treatment of large enterprises, which include Ust-Kamenogorsk metallurgical complex "Kazzinc", is an urgent problem. Among the chemical and physical-chemical methods of purification, sorption is very advantageous due to the opportunity to seal and neutralize the waste. Sorbent of different nature for purification of the given metallurgical complex wastewater is used in the work: natural material – shungite, activated by chlorhydric acid and water; polymer-protected hydrogel with embedded particles of activated shungite. Polymer-protected hydrogel is a cross-linked polymer based on acrylamide and N,N?- methylene- polyacrylamide, bis-acrylamide. Preliminary tests were carried out on model solutions in order to determine the optimal contact time of the sorbent with the solution. Static conditions were chosen to obtain higher values of extraction coefficients. Studies conducted on real wastewater have shown that the most effective sorbent is a polymer-protected hydrogel with activated shungite particles. Shungite is easily introduced into the polymer in the mixing process and requires less energy consumption for distributing in the polymer. Mineral and carbon parts of shungite can be introduced nearly into all polar and nonpolar polymers that is due to the components contained in shungite (noncrystalline carbon and silicon dioxide with hydrophilous and hydrophobic properties), due to metastability of shungite carbon structure, as well as possibility to change surface characteristics during chemical modification.
