Title: Remediation technology of groundwater contaminated by perchloroethylene

Authors: Yanqing Wu, Changwen Ma

Addresses: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. ' School of City Construction and Environmental Engineering, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, Shanghai, 201209, China

Abstract: To dechlorinate perchloroethylene (PCE), batch experiments were conducted for five groups of reactors: zero-valent iron (Fe0), zero-valent zinc (Zn0), an anaerobic microbial community (MB), a combination of iron powder and an anaerobic microbial community (FeMB), and combination of zinc powder and an anaerobic microbial community (ZnMB). After about 25 days, PCE in the FeMB degradation system has been almost completely removed; about 43% of PCE has been dechlorinated to the nontoxic hydrocarbons acetylene, ethylene or ethane. This major reaction pathway in the FeMB system was different from those in other systems. The chain pseudo-first-order kinetic reaction model was applied to predicting the complete dechlorination of PCE to non-chlorinated hydrocarbons in different systems.

Keywords: PCE; perchloroethylene; dechlorination; zero-valent zinc; anaerobic microbial community; integrated degradation; groundwater contamination; water pollution; iron powder; non-toxic hydrocarbons; acetylene; ethylene; ethane; kinetic reaction; kinetic modelling; remediation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2011.039094

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2011 Vol.45 No.1/2/3, pp.176 - 185

Published online: 29 Apr 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article