Use of different kinds of persulfate activation with iron for the remediation of a PAH-contaminated soil

Fate of iron and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons during the remediation of a contaminated soil using iron-activated persulfate: A column study

“…Given the reactivity due to its reducing potential, it has been reported the effectiveness of nZVI as reducing agent for certain pollutants, like chlorinated hydrocarbons (Kober et al, 2014;Kocur et al, 2014), as well as an efficient PS activator for the degradation of aliphatic hydrocarbons (e.g. Diesel) or PAH (Pardo et al, 2015b;Peluffo et al, 2015). In accordance to literature, the vast majority of the studies that have assessed the use of activated PS for the remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soils have been carried out from batch experiments.…”

“…Soil properties and the characterization procedure, except the determination of the hydraulic conductivity, are detailed in previous works (Pardo et al, 2014;Vicente et al, 2012). Soil spiking was carried out as reported elsewhere (Kulik et al, 2006;Mora et al, 2014;Peluffo et al, 2015), spreading slowly an acetone stock solution of the contaminants to the clean soil, being mixed manually with a spatula simultaneously. After spiking, contaminated soil was kept at room temperature in the absence of light for three months in order to ensure a certain grade of aging.…”

“…PS in all runs and Fe concentration in runs CPS1 and CPS2 were selected in accordance with a previous work, based on experiments performed in batch mode (Peluffo et al, 2015). Iron concentration in run CPS3 was selected for studying the influence of the amount of nZVI injected on the removal efficiency of the contaminants.…”

“…(3)) by adding ferrous salts or zerovalent iron (Eq. (4)) (Chen et al, 2015;Killian et al, 2007;Peluffo et al, 2015), by heat or light activation, by peroxide activation (Zhao et al, 2013), or more recently by alkaline activation (Deng et al, 2014;Liang and Guo, 2012;Liang and Lei, 2015). In addition, during PS activation, sulfate radicals and hydroxyl radicals (E = 2.70 V) may coexist, as shown in Eqs.…”

“…For decades, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) have appeared and accumulated in soils and groundwater, becoming one of the most widespread contaminants in the world (Peluffo et al, 2015;Puglisi et al, 2007). Soil and groundwater contamination by PAHs is a consequence of the development and growth of several industrial activities, such as those related to manufacture gas plants, wood impregnation, coke manufacturing, hydrocarbon production and metal processing, (Brown et al, 2003;Sims and Overcash, 1983), as well as diverse natural phenomena (volcano eruptions, forest fires).…”