Effect of co-contaminants on the dechlorination of polychlorinated biphenylsPaper submitted to the Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science.

Abstract

A promising photolysis based technology to dechlorinate polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), extracted from soils, in alkaline isopropanol (IPA) as reaction medium has been proposed. To be marketable the impact of co-contaminants extracted along with the PCBs, on the photodechlorination process needs investigation. In this paper the effectiveness of the photodeclorination process on PCBs extracted from samples of a representative soil containing co-contaminants is reported. The photodechlorination of PCBs extracted from weathered soils showed promising results of more than 76% dechlorination within the first hour of UV irradiation. Nearly complete dechlorination (96%) was achieved after 2 h of UV irradiation. To provide quantitative controlled appraisal of the effect of co-contaminants and explanation of the effects, dechlorination of neat Aroclor 1254 in the presence of the common co-contaminant, transformer oil, was evaluated. Further, the effect of transformer oil on some of the individual PCB congeners in the Aroclor mixture was also studied. The difference in the maximum percentage dechlorination of PCBs with and without transformer oil is 15%.