Studies on Adsorption of Nickel on Polymetallic Sea Nodule Residue

The metallurgical and mining industries have been recogn-ised as main source of heavy metals pollution on the earth. The problem of heavy metals is not related to a single metal but to a combination of metals originating from one or several sources. In the mining activities for production of high grade ores and minerals, large quantit-ies of low grade ore and mineral are generated and remain unused, which form hazardous solid wastes. Apart from solid wastes, large amounts of liquid wastes are also gene-rated during the metallurgical processing of primary and secondary raw materials, which contain health hazardous heavy metals. These wastes are bound to cause environmen-tal imbalance and can create life threatening ecological problems if dumped and released into water without any pre-treatment. In addition, these liquid wastes may cause detrimental effects on the human health when pollute the ground water resources.