Effects of environmental factors on the removal of heavy metals by sulfide-modified nanoscale zerovalent iron

Abstract

Sulfide-modified nanoscale zerovalent iron (S-nZVI) has excellent reducing performance for heavy metals in water. The influence of environmental factors on the reactivity can be used to explore the practical feasibility of S-nZVI and analyze the reaction mechanism in depth. This study compared the removal effect and mechanism of Cu2+ and Ni2+ by nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI), S-nZVI, and carboxymethyl cellulose-modified nanoscale zerovalent iron (CMC-nZVI). The results show that the pseudo-first-order kinetic constant of Cu2+ removal by nZVI, S-nZVI, and CMC-nZVI was 1.384, 1.919, and 2.890 min−1, respectively, and the rate of Ni2+ removal was 0.304, 0.931, and 0.360 min−1, respectively. The removal mechanism of S-nZVI was similar to that of nZVI and CMC-nZVI. Specifically, Cu2+ was predominantly removed by reduction, while Ni2+ removal included adsorption and reduction. Environmental factors had a specific inhibitory effect on the removal of Cu2+ but had a negligible impact on Ni2+. The condition of low pH, the presence of Cl− and humic acid (HA) promoted the corrosion consumption of Fe0, in which H+ directly corroded Fe0 at low pH. At the same time, Cl− and HA inhibited the adsorption or binding of heavy metal ions on the particle surface, thereby reducing the electron transfer and utilization efficiency. The passivation of NO3- reduced the anaerobic corrosion of the material in water but suppressed the release of electrons, thereby reducing the reduction efficiency of the three types of materials. The anaerobic corrosion of S-nZVI was less affected by environmental factors, and it can still maintain more than 80% of the electronic utilization efficiency under different environmental factors, which illustrates that S-nZVI has broad prospects for practical applications in heavy metal polluted water.