Abstract

Aluminium (Al) is one of the most valuable metals in the world. Unfortunately, many Al workshops in the worlddisposeof a large portion of their Al as waste. This study experimented the use of chemical leaching method to extract Al fromwasteproduced in Al workshops and its reuse in drinking water treatment. The Al content in AWW was found out to be 956.4mg/gusingacid digestion method. This study used low strength nitric acid as a leaching solution. The strength of acid was variedbetween0.1N to 0.6 N with an increment of 0.1. The leaching process was carried out using Jar Test Apparatus at agitationspeedequalsto180 rpm for 120 minutes. The optimized recovery of Al was found to be equal to 55.36% at 0.5 N strength of leachingsolution. Theleached solution was then used as a coagulant in treatment of water samples collected from natural sources. Theoptimizedcoagulant dose for Kolar river sample to achieve turbidity less than 5 NTU was found at 3 ml/L of recovered coagulant. Similarlythe optimized coagulant dose for Ambazari lake water sample was found to be 3 ml/L. Keywords: Aluminium, Nitric Acid, Jar Test.