Potential of artificial soil preparation for vegetation restoration using red mud and phosphogypsum

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2024-09, Vol.941, p.173553, Article 173553
• Main Authors: Liu, Yong, Zhang, Lishuai, Chen, Li, Xue, Binbin, Wang, Guocheng, Zhu, Guangxu, Gou, Wanli, Yang, Dan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial soil; Calcium Sulfate; Environmental Restoration and Remediation - methods; Industrial solid waste management; Phosphogypsum; Phosphorus - analysis; Plants; Red mud; Soil - chemistry; Soil Microbiology; Vegetation restoration; Waste Management - methods
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173553

Red mud and phosphogypsum have long been a focus and challenge in global industrial waste management, and their low-cost and large-scale utilization technology has always been an urgent need. This study is based on the strong acid-base neutralization reaction between red mud and phosphogypsum, which contain an elemental composition similar to that of natural soil, red mud itself has characteristic of clay minerals, and other auxiliary materials (i.e. rice husk powder, bentonite, fly ash, polyacrylamide flocculant and microbial suspension) were added, so as to explore the potential of synergistically prepared artificial soil for vegetation restoration. The results showed that the artificial soils exhibited physicochemical characteristics (e.g., pH, moisture content, cation exchange capacity) similar to those of natural soil, along with abundant organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium contents, meeting the growth requirements of plants. The artificial soils were able to support favorable growth of suitable plants (e.g., sunflower, wheat, rye grass), accumulating high levels of diverse enzymatic activities, comparable to those in natural soils (e.g., catalase, urease, phosphatase), or even surpassing natural soils (e.g., sucrase), and rich microorganism communities, such as Cyanobacteria, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria in the bacteria domain, and Ascomycota in the fungi domain, were initially developed. It's suggested that preparing 1 ton of artificial soil entails synergistic consumption of 613.7 kg of red mud and 244.6 kg of phosphogypsum, accounting for mass proportions of 61.4 % and 24.5 %, respectively. In future, more evaluations on the leaching loss of nutrients and alkalinity and the environmental risks of heavy metals should be conducted to more references for the artificial soil application. In summary, the preparation of artificial soil is a very simple, efficient, scalable and low-cost collaborative resource utilization scheme of red mud and phosphogypsum, which has great potential for vegetation restoration in some places such as tailings field and soil-deficient depression. [Display omitted] •The idea and scheme of artificial soil preparation for vegetation restoration using red mud and phosphogypsum were proposed•Artificial soil has basic elements, physical and chemical properties and nutrient fertility similar to common natural soil•Some plants (e.g. sunflower, wheat, rye grass) have been shown to germinate and grow well on artific