Journal of Environmental Protection, 2019, 10, 651-671 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jep ISSN Online: 2152-2219 ISSN Print: 2152-2197 DOI: 10.4236/jep.2019.105039 May 23, 2019 651 Journal of Environmental Protection Washing and Extraction of Metals from Contaminated Soil Constituents: Implications for Contaminated Simulated Soil and Metallurgical Wastes with Different Reagents Sanja S. Potgieter-Vermaak 1 , Leonard U. Mgbeahuruike 1 , Lizelle van Dyk 2 , Judith Barrett 1 , Herman J. Potgieter 1,2 1 Chemistry and Environmental Science Division, School of Science and the Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK 2 School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Abstract Leaching behaviour of heavy metals (HMs) from simulated soil (SS), pre- pared according to standard guidelines, as well as its constituents (quartz sand (QS), bentonite clay (BC), and peat moss (PM)) were investigated. The study focused on a batch process with the aim of comparing the leaching po- tentials and metals solubilisation of ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), ethylene diamine disuccinic acid (EDDS), acetylacetone (Hacac), citric acid (CA), and tartaric acid (TA) for sustainable metal extraction pur- poses after a maximum leaching time of 60 min. The HMs concentrations with which the constituents were spiked with was such that reflected a con- taminated site. The recovery potentials of both the SS and its constituents were found to vary for single metal (SM) and multi-metal (MM) systems. EDTA was the most efficient (on average 31% and 33% for SM and MM) and TA the least efficient (on average of 2% and 3% for SM and MM) extractant. For Hacac, preferential recovery for Cu and Ni were significant when com- pared to the other metals, while, metal recovery by EDDS in SS was lower than could be expected. The leaching trend for the targeted metals was stud- ied using conventional leaching models. Keywords HMs, Leaching, Chelants, Pollution, Metallurgical Wastes, Contaminated Soil How to cite this paper: Potgieter-Vermaak, S.S., Mgbeahuruike, L.U., van Dyk, L., Barrett, J. and Potgieter, H.J. (2019) Wash- ing and Extraction of Metals from Conta- minated Soil Constituents: Implications for Contaminated Simulated Soil and Metal- lurgical Wastes with Different Reagents. Journal of Environmental Protection, 10, 651-671. https://doi.org/10.4236/jep.2019.105039 Received: January 30, 2019 Accepted: May 20, 2019 Published: May 23, 2019 Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access