Treatment of groundwater contaminated with high levels of explosives using advanced oxidation processes

Abstract

Current and former military installations around the world have numerous sites with groundwater contaminated with explosive compounds polluted from military related activities. The test influent used in this study was a groundwater collected from an US Army facility that was contaminated with high levels of military derived explosives. The sample had a total explosive concentration in excess of 75 mg/l. Bench-scale evaluations were performed to determine the effectiveness of the candidate advanced oxidation processes for treatment of the groundwater in terms of removing the pollutants to method sub-detection limits with these results formulating the basis for comparison along with generating data that can be used toward increasing the understanding of treatment mechanisms associated with the various processes. Results indicate that the ozonated systems generally resulted in the removal of the explosives to the targeted levels with 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene removal lagging in terms of removal due to its simultaneous formation and degradation. The oxidation system that was irradiated using the medium-pressure UV lamp and dosed with hydrogen peroxide and ozone achieved the best performance with complete removal of all targeted pollutants within 10 min of treatment.