- Previous Article
- Next Article
- Table of Contents
Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Vol.799, 1-8, 2017
Electrokinetic oxidant soil flushing: A solution for in situ remediation of hydrocarbons polluted soils
Nowadays, the majority of the remediation studies have been carried out using artificially spiked soils with individual target pollutants. One of the bottlenecks is the application of developed technologies to the removal of pollutants in real aged contaminated soils, which is much more difficult than in spiked ones. Thus, in this study, the performance of a combined technology as flushing using different oxidants coupled with the electrokinetic technique was performed and its feasibility was evaluated to remediate a real industrial polluted soil with low permeability in which is not possible the conventional flushing system. Initially, the characterization of this soil showed a wide distribution of hydrocarbons with a total petroleum hydrocarbons content of 29,666 mg.kg(-1). Based on the hydrocarbons distribution, the source of the pollutants was identified as a spillage of motor oil and diesel. Moreover, the aging of the pollution was evaluated (around 16 years) resulting in a historically polluted soil. Initially, an ex-situ oxidative treatment was considered. This treatment demonstrated the feasibility of the different oxidants on the removal of the hydrocarbons, achieving removal values higher than 65% in all the experiments. Furthermore, a critical parameter in the treatment, as pH, was also evaluated resulting in an acidic environment for KMnO4 and Na2S2O8 and basic environment for NaOCI. Later, the simulated bench scale in situ removal of the contaminants was considered, but the delivery of the oxidants into the polluted soil is hard, and for this reason, the coupling of flushing and electrokinetics was carried out. Working at the optimal conditions determined before, the treatment with the selected oxidants was performed. The total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) removal (40-60%), the profile of hydrocarbons and metals in the different sections of the soil after the treatments proved the efficiency of the system. The viability of the selected hybrid technique in the removal of TPH from historically polluted soils was demonstrated.
Keywords:Electrokinetic;Real polluted soil;TPH removal;Sodium persulfate;Potassium permanganate;Sodium hypochlorite