The Big Picture: A flood of toxic sludge
On Monday, October 4th, a large reservoir filled with toxic red sludge in western Hungary ruptured, releasing approximately 700,000 cubic meters (185 million gallons) of stinking caustic mud, which killed many animals, at least four people, and injured over 120 – many with chemical burns. The 12-foot-high flood of sludge inundated several towns, sweeping cars off the road as it flowed into the nearby Marcal River. Emergency workers rushed to pour 1,000 tons of plaster into the Marcal River in an attempt to bind the sludge and keep it from flowing on to the Danube some 45 miles away. The red sludge in the reservoir is a byproduct of refining bauxite into alumina, which took place at an alumina plant run by the Hungarian Alumina Production and Trading Company. A criminal probe has just been opened by Hungarian authorities.
The byproduct is dilute lye solution primarily filled with micronized ferric oxide. Aqueous NaOH scrubs CO2 from the air to sequentially form Na2CO3 and NaHCO3. Carbon credits! The ferric oxide is salable as red pigment or sell it to a steel mill.
It’s raining corporate income while Hungary is using its open billfolds as rain bonnets. Even evil dicoronylene in hydrotreaters is a resource. Sell it to university undergrad labs. Clean it up, react with one or two moles of maleic anhydride, aromatize the products. Amittedly that will not move several hundred tonnes/year worldwide… unless somebody gets clever toward custom graphenes. Then, shortage!
more pollution and spills? 🙁