Surfactant enhanced electrokinetic remediation of DDT from soils

Abstract

Electrokinetic remediation has been investigated extensively as one of the noble technologies in remediation of metal contaminated soils. However, its applications in remediation of organic contaminants have been limited due to low solubilities of organics in water. In addition, most organic contaminants are non-ionic and therefore, they are not mobile under electrical field. The use of surfactants may increase the remediation efficiency by increasing the solubility of organics. Significant fraction of organics associated with soil, can be transferred to micellar phase, which then can be transported toward either cathode or anode, depending on the ionic group of surfactants. In this study, the removal of hydrophobic organic contaminants from a soil using electrokinetic method was investigated in the presence of surfactants. A nonionic surfactant, Tween 80, and an anionic surfactant, SDBS, were used in the experiments. DDT was chosen as the model organic contaminant. Phase distribution studies and column experiments were conducted. It was found that both Tween 80 and SDBS had similar solubilization potentials for DDT. It was also shown that the aqueous DDT mass could reach from 0.01 to 13% of the total mass in the presence of 7500 mg/L of SDBS. No significant movement of DDT was observed when Tween 80 was used in the column experiments. This was attributed to low rates of electroosmotic flows and strong interaction of Tween 80 with the soil. The amount of surfactant was not enough to mobilize DDT significantly in the column studies. On the other hand, electrokinetic transport with SDBS yielded much better results. DDT transport toward the anode within the negatively charged micelles overcame the opposite electrosmotic flow. This was attributed to the lower degree of interaction between the soil and SDBS, and the electrokinetic transport of negatively charged micelles.