Treatment of Solid Elemental Sulfur

Happy New Year Colleagues!

I am kindly asking, what could be the best and cost-effective method of treating sulphur spillages of approximately 300 tonnes?   

Taxonomy

• Public Health
• Solid Waste Management
• Treatment
• Treatment Methods
• Decontamination
• Decontamination
• Contaminant Removal
• Contaminant Movement Mapping
• Disaster Relief
• Hydrochemistry
• Sulfates
• Chemical Materials
• Safety & Hazard
• water treatment
• Public Health
• Spill Containment

7 Answers

1. Simple and effective solutions depend on sulfur contamination.
   If sulphur contaminated with petroleum products,  ​then it can be to utilize ​his in special ​concrete or ​other ​construction ​materials. ​
   If sulphur not contaminated with petroleum products, then it can be chemically transformed into sulphate fertilizer.

2. 300 tons is a lot of sulphur.  This is a valuable product - try to recover it please.  As others point out, it depends on what it is now contaminated with - is it sand and silt, or also with other chemicals, etc.

3. Wish you very happy & Environment Friendly New Year

    To answer your question precisely I need the source of Solid elemental sulfur.

   Rajendrakumar V Saraf

4. I agree with the other comments. Also consider that elemental sulfur is entirely biotransformed by sulfur oxidizing bacteria to relatively harmless sulfate. Indeed the drinking water standard for sulfate is at least 500 ppm. Another use of elemental sulfur is to use it as the source of energy to drive biological nitrate reduction (to N2) in large bioreactors. But this idea supposes you have an issue with nitrate in your local ground- or surface waters.

5. Elemental sulfur is used extensively in agriculture to lower the pH of alkaline soils to near neutral to improve plant growth. If this is fairly pure an not contaminated with oil byproducts, you may be able to sell it. Otherwise spread it on soil and add a corresponding amount of ground limestone, high in calcium carbonate to neutralize the sulfur.     

6. Elemental Sulphur since it is flammable the best option would be to consider physical recovery  but now it will be resting upon situational analysis of where the spillage occured i.e the environment where it has spilled is it water or land- is it wet, is it a dry environment. Also consider if there is an industry that might want to use sulphur in its processes if the sulphur is on an environment that is easily extractable economicaly then consider that option. 

7. Elemental Sulphur is benign, but it can catch fire. It is safe to bury it, but it would be better to recover it physically. Is this not possible?