The state-of-the art remediation technique for chlorinated organic contamination is in situ remediation using NZVI. Nevertheless, an important technical limitation of this approach is that NZVI can degrade only dissolved contaminants but becomes less effective in degrading contaminant sorbed onto soil matrix. For this reason, the NZVI capability to rapidly dechlorinating chlorinated orgnaics is not as useful in subsurface remediation as it should because the rate-limited step is the desorption of the pollutants from soil before they could be degraded by NZVI. This research investigates an innovative concept to solve this technical difficulty by increasing soil temperature to expedite contaminant desorption from soil matrix. The increase of temperature is achieved by electromagnetic induction heating of NZVI, a ferromagnetic material, delivered into the subsurface for environmental cleanup. This concept is analogous to a cancer treatment approach called hyperthermia using magnetic nanoparticles to electromagnetically induce heat to specifically kill cancer cells.

Feasibility evaluation of using polymer-modified nanoscale zerovalent iron (NZVI) together with electromagnetic induction heating to accelerate remediation of groundwater and soil contaminated with volatile chlorinated organic pollutants

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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