The main purpose of the paper is to share the results and experience from processing soil extracts containing a high concentration of both anionic surfactant and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) by use of method the called adsorptive micellar flocculation. The method is similar to coagulation, but the mechanism is more complicated. The flocculants examined in the laboratory section involved ferric chloride, aluminium chloride, ferric sulfate, and aluminum sulfate. It was observed that ferric chloride provides the best PCB removal efficiency from the extract. Subsequently, two extracts obtained from the pilot‐scale demonstration of the PCBs leaching from the soils by the surfactant solution were processed by this method. The volume of the extracts processed was several hundred liters. The method proved it can remove PCBs from all extracts with a very high efficiency (greater than 99.99%). The residual PCB concentrations in solution were less than 1 μg/L.
Studies of solubilization of organic contaminants by surfactants are complicated by the fact that the effective surfactant concentration is decreased by partitioning into the organic phase. This paper introduces an experimental setup for surfactant solubilization where the partitioning loss of surfactants is minimized. Using this setup, two anionic (sodium dodecyl sulphate and Spolapon AOS 146) and one nonionic surfactant (Novanik 0633 A) were compared. When comparing solubilization efficacies expressed as multiples of the critical micelle concentration, the two anionic surfactants were able to solubilize a higher amount of polychlorinated biphenyls. For lower surfactant concentrations, solubilization efficacies were similar for all surfactants. However, it is necessary to take into account that the critical micelle concentration of the nonionic surfactant is considerably lower.
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