Formulation of sludge incineration residue based geopolymer and stabilization performance on potential toxic elements

•The higher the content of SIR, the lower the compressive strength of geopolymer.•Moisture loss at high temperatures led to the variations of compressive strength.•Species distribution of potential toxic elements influenced the stabilization.•Acidic condition promoted the leaching of potential toxic elements from geopolymer.•Geopolymer realized a stable and efficient stabilization of potential toxic elements. Using sludge incineration residue (SIR) to prepare SIR-based geopolymer can realize the minimization and reclamation of urban sludge as well as the stabilization of potential toxic elements. This work has researched the critical factors that influence the formulation of SIR-based geopolymer and the stabilization performance on potential toxic elements. Results showed that the addition amount of SIR had significant influence on the compressive strength of geopolymer, while the modules of sodium silicate and the sodium silicate/metakaolin ratio had little influence thereon. When the addition amount of SIR was 10%, the modules of sodium silicate was 1.3 and the sodium silicate/metakaolin ratio was 0.86, the compressive strength of geopolymer reached the maximum of 95.6 MPa. When the temperature increased from 25 °C to 800 °C, the compressive strength showed a tendency of increasing first and then decreasing. SIR-based geopolymer could significantly reduce the leaching of Zn and Cu from 1264.8 mg/kg and 856.3 mg/kg to 50.8 mg/kg and 30.7 mg/kg respectively, leading to a stabilizing efficiency more than 96%. pH influenced the stabilization of geopolymer on the potential toxic elements, the effective diffusion coefficients De of Zn, Cu, Ni, Pb and Cr at pH = 4 were higher than those at the pH of 7, which were probably due to the physic-chemical characteristics and the corresponding changes in the leaching and species distribution of the potential toxic elements.