Testing the Suitability of Zerovalent Iron Materials for Reactive Walls

Chicgoua Noubactep; Günther Meinrath; Peter Dietrich; Martin Sauter; B. J. Merkel

doi:10.1071/EN04014

RESEARCH ARTICLE

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Testing the Suitability of Zerovalent Iron Materials for Reactive Walls

Chicgoua Noubactep ^A ^D , Günther Meinrath ^B ^C , Peter Dietrich ^C , Martin Sauter ^A and B. J. Merkel ^C

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Centre of Geosciences—Applied Geology, University Göttingen, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.

^B RER Consultants, Schießstattweg 3a, 94032 Passau, Germany.

^C Institute of Geology, Technical University Mining Academy Freiberg, 09596 Freiberg, Germany.

^D Corresponding author. Email: cnoubac@gwdg.de

Environmental Chemistry 2(1) 71-76 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN04014
Submitted: 20 March 2004 Accepted: 11 November 2004 Published: 21 March 2005

Environmental Context. Groundwater remediation is generally a costly, long-term process. In situ remediation using permeable reactive barriers, through which the groundwaters pass, is a potential solution. For redox-sensitive contaminants in groundwater, a metallic iron barrier (zerovalent iron, ZVI) can immobilize or degrade these dissolved pollutants. Scrap iron materials are a low-cost ZVI material but, because of the wide variation of scrap metal compositions, testing methods for characterizing the corrosion behaviour need to be developed.

Abstract. Zerovalent iron (ZVI) has been proposed as reactive material in permeable in situ walls for contaminated groundwater. An economically feasible ZVI-based reactive wall requires cheap but efficient iron materials. From an uranium treatability study and results of iron dissolution in 0.002 M EDTA by five selected ZVI materials, it is shown that current research and field implementation is not based on a rational selection of application-specific iron metal sources. An experimental procedure is proposed which could enable a better material characterization. This procedure consists of mixing ZVI materials and reactive additives, including contaminant releasing materials (CRMs), in long-term batch experiments and characterizing the contaminant concentration over the time.

Keywords. : iron — redox reactions — uranium — water treatment

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr Manfred Paul, former director of the corrosion laboratory of the Institute of Material Technique of the Technical University Mining Academy Freiberg (Germany), who contributed with discussion and suggestions to the quality of this work. Dr Ralf Köber, from the Institute of Earth Science of the University of Kiel (Germany), kindly purchased the commercial ZVI samples. The used scrap iron was kindly purchased by a branch of the MAZ (Metallaufbereitung Zwickau, Co) in Freiberg. The work was granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG-GK 272 and DFG-Sa 501/15–1).

References

Testing the Suitability of Zerovalent Iron Materials for Reactive Walls

Acknowledgments

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