The Effect of pH, Ionic Strength and the Presence of PbII on the Formation of Calcium Carbonate from Homogenous Alkaline Solutions at Room Temperature

Precipitation of calcium carbonates in aqueous systems is an important factor controlling various industrial, biological, and geological processes. In the first part of this study, the well-known titration approach introduced by Gebauer and coworkers in 2008 s used to obtain reliable experimental dataset for the deep understanding of CaCO3 nucleation kinetics in supersaturated solutions over a broad range of pH and ionic strength conditions. In the second part, the effect of impurities, i.e., 1 mol% of Pb2+, was assessed in the same range of experimental conditions. Divalent lead has been shown to have an inhibitory effect in all ranges of the conditions tested except for pH 8 and low ionic strength (≤0.15 mol/L). Future investigations might take advantage of the methodology and the data provided in this work to investigate the effect of other system variables. The investigation of all the major variables and the assessment of eventual synergic effects could improve our ability to predict the formation of CaCO3 in complex natural systems.