Treatment of fly ash from power plants using thermal plasma

• Sulaiman Al-Mayman,
• Ibrahim AlShunaifi,
• Abdullah Albeladi,
• Imed Ghiloufi and
• Saud Binjuwair

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1043–1048, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.105

• , Saudi Arabia 10.3762/bjnano.8.105 Abstract Fly ash from power plants is very toxic because it contains heavy metals. In this study fly ash was treated with a thermal plasma. Before their treatment, the fly ash was analyzed by many technics such as X-ray fluorescence, CHN elemental analysis, inductively

• coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. With these technics, the composition, the chemical and physical proprieties of fly ash are determined. The results obtained by these analysis show that fly ash is mainly composed of carbon, and it contains also sulfur and metals

• such as V, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Ni, and Rh. The scanning electron microscopy analysis shows that fly ash particles are porous and have very irregular shapes with particle sizes of 20–50 μm. The treatment of fly ash was carried out in a plasma reactor and in two steps. In the first step, fly ash was treated