The growing use of reducing particulate materials (e.g., zerovalent metals, lower-valent metal oxides, sulfide minerals) in water treatment has been encouraged by progress toward understanding contaminant reactions with these materials at the molecular to nano-scale. What is most lacking, however, is a rigorous approach to characterizing the reactivity of these materials at the scale of whole particles, particles aggregates, or packed beds of particles. This can be done using direct electrochemical measurements of redox process performed on particle disk and packed bed electrodes (PDEs and PBEs). This approach is rapid, quantitative, precise, reproducible, and very flexible (with respect to electrochemical methods, particulate materials, solution conditions, pretreatments, amendments, time resolution, etc.). The parameters obtained (current, potential, impedance) will be correlated with independent measurements of bulk reactivity (by conventional batch or column experiments), from which quantitative property-activity relationships (QPARs) can be derived. These QPARs will be applied to characterize and explain the relative performance of a wide range of reducing materials, and eventually to identify new reducing material formulations with improved or optimized performance.

Extrathermodynamic relationships between contaminant removal kinetics and properties of reducing materials

248th National Meeting (2014)

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