Return to search

Treatment of Phenol-Contaminated Soils by Combined Electrokinetic-Fenton Process

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the treatment efficiency of phenol contaminated soils by electrokinetic (EK) process conducted in sand boxes (60 cm¡Ñ30 cm¡Ñ30 cm; L¡ÑW¡ÑH). The electric field strength, electrode polarity reverse, and Fenton reagent were employed as the experimental factors in this study to assess the variations of soil characteristics, potential difference, and residual phenol concentration distribution during a treatment period of 20 days and after the treatment. It was found that the anode reservoir pH decreased to around 2 and the cathode reservoir pH increased to approximately 12 after 2~3 days of treatment in the no electrode polarity reverse system. However, the variation of pH in the anode and cathode reservoirs was less obvious in the case with electrode polarity reverse.
No matter a constant potential system or a constant current system was employed, a general trend of a lower pH at the anode reservoir and a higher pH at the cathode reservoir would be found. The acid front generated at the anode reservoir flushed across the soil specimen toward the cathode and the base front advanced toward the anode. However, in the central region of sand box, unsaturated and saturated soil specimen maintain neutral.
For EK or EK-Fenton experiments, under the constant potential conditions, the potential difference relative to the cathode versus the distance from anode was found to have a linear relationship at the beginning of the electrical potential application. As the treatment time elapsed, the potential gradient became non-linear. Nevertheless, there was no remarked potential gradient change in the case with electrode polarity reverse.
Although capillarity has resulted in an increase of the moisture content of unsaturated soil (from 25.34% to 30% after 20 days), electroosmotic (EO) flow was not obvious in the unsaturated zone.
For the experiments with electrode polarity reverse, they had a much greater EO flow quantity, the electroosmotic permeability coefficients for constant potential and constant current systems were 6.42¡Ñ10-6 cm2/V¡Es and 9.47¡Ñ10-6 cm2/V¡Es, respectively. It was also found that the existence of contaminants did reduce the EO flow quantity.
Regardless of the employment of a constant potential or constant current system, the maximum destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) of phenol was obtained for EK-Fenton process. The maximum DRE values of phenol for both constant potential and constant current systems were found to be 78.06% and 80.11%, respectively. However, the DRE of phenol was found to be much lower for the system with electrode polarity reverse. It was postulated that the destruction efficiency of phenol was less obvious than the removal efficiency in the electrode polarity reverse system. In addition, a frequent reverse of electrode polarity also resulted in a frequent change of EO flow direction. Thus, a flow hysteresis of phenol in the soil compartment was found.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0712102-180551
Date12 July 2002
CreatorsChen, Yue-Sen
Contributorsnone, none, none
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0712102-180551
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

Page generated in 0.0019 seconds