The Use of Municipal Solid Waste Compost in Contaminated Soil to Reduce the Availability of Ni and Cd: A Study from Istanbul

Abstract

This study investigated the short-term effect of adding Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) compost to artificially Ni and Cd polluted soil for a 3-month period. Before this study, the adsorption capacity of MSW compost to adsorb Ni and Cd was also investigated. At the end of the adsorption studies, it was found that Ni adsorption on MSW compost can be explained with the Freundlich model, and Cd adsorption with the Langmuir model. It was noted that in the short-term effect studies, the addition of compost to soil decreased the concentrations of the immediately available forms of Ni and Cd. The addition of compost to soil increased the potentially available form of Ni and Cd. The leachability of Ni assessed by the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure test increased with the compost amounts. However, the addition of compost did not affect the leachability of Cd. At the end of the sequential extraction procedure, it could be said that a 1% addition of compost increased the concentrations of Ni and Cd in organic matter bounded and residual fractions. The addition of more (>1%) compost, decreased the concentrations of Ni in these fractions. 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 13721378, 2015