Development of an integrated, in-situ remediation technology. Draft topical report for task No. 9. Part II. Entitled: TCE degradation using non-biological methods, September 26, 1994--May 25, 1996

Abstract

Contamination in low permeability soils poses a significant technical challenge to in-situ remediation efforts. Poor accessibility to the contaminants and difficulty in delivery of treatment reagents have rendered existing in-situ treatments such as bioremediation, vapor extraction, pump and treat rather ineffective when applied to low permeability soils present at many contaminated sites. The technology is an integrated in-situ treatment in which established geotechnical methods are used to install degradation zones directly in the contaminated soil and electro-osmosis is utilized to move the contaminants back and forth through those zones until the treatment is completed. The use of zero valence iron for reductive dechlorination of aliphatic chlorinated hydrocarbons is currently under investigation by a number of research groups as a potential method of in-situ treatment of contaminated ground water. The reaction appears to involve the transfer of electrons to chloro-aliphatic compounds by the oxidation of zero valence iron to ferrous iron (Fe{sup +2}). Our studies have indicated that this reaction is consistent with those of corrosion, and as such, can be influenced or increased by the presence of small amounts of metals (5% by weight) such as copper, tin, silver, gold and palladium coated on the iron surface. Incomplete coverage of the iron surface with a more electropositive metal results in an open galvanic cell, which increases the oxidation of iron and facilitates and increases the concurrent reduction of trichloroethylene and other chlorinated aliphatic compounds to the corresponding alkenes and alkanes. Our results show that plating more electropositive metals onto certain iron surfaces results in approximately a factor of ten increase in the dechlorination rate of small organochlorine compounds such as TCE.