Contamination of groundwater by nitrates leaching from intensive agricultural and livestock operations have become a major concern for surrounding communities that use groundwater as their water supply. High levels of nitrate in drinking water poses a significant risk to human health, i.e., methaemoglobinaemia (“blue baby” syndrome).
The traditional pump-and-treat method is ineffective in medium to fine-textured agricultural soils due to the low hydraulic conductivity. This paper presents the results of a laboratory experiment investigating the feasibility of using electrokinetic treatment in retaining, accumulating, moving and remediating nitrates in a silty loam soil under hydraulic gradients.
A hydraulic gradient of 1.25 was applied to the horizontal soil columns to simulate a groundwater movement system. The study was performed in two stages. During the first stage of the experiment, the anode located at the inflow end of the columns was able to retard the movement of nitrates even under a hydraulic gradient of 1.25. After 15 days of flow, the effluent nitrate concentration in the control column rose to 90 mg l−1 while no nitrates were detected in the effluent from columns subjected to the electrokinetic treatment.
After 15 days, the polarity of the electrodes was switched and this second stage lasted another 20 days. The cathode near the inflow end promoted the conversion of nitrates entering the column to other forms. The anode near the outflow end promoted the migration and accumulation of negatively charged nitrate ions towards the outflow end. By the 12th day, the nitrate concentrations in the electrokinetically treated columns were brought down to <5 mg NO3-N l−1. Electrokinetic treatment retarded nitrate movement against a hydraulic gradient of 1.25 and effectively restored a medium-textured soil contaminated with NO3-N.
The NO2-N level remained below 1 mg l−1 throughout the experiment. The hydraulic conductivity varied between 1.0E–7 and 3.6E–7 m s−1. The current requirement varied between 3 and 6 mA. 相似文献
Typical pump-and-treat (PAT) optimization problems involve design of pumping schemes, while minimizing cost and meeting a set of constraints. Due to scarcity of information about the hydrogeological system, stochastic modeling approaches can be used to assess tradeoffs between optimality and reliability. Using a stochastic approach, the constrained, single-objective problem may be turned into a multiobjective problem by substituting constraint inequalities with an additional objective function (OF) that accounts for the reliability of the PAT process. In this work, two approaches are analyzed: in one case, the additional OF consists of the probability of failure of a given remediation policy; in another, the OF additional is represented by the recourse, namely the penalty cost induced by the violation of constraints. In order to overcome the overwhelming computational cost required by stochastic simulation, surrogate forms of the OFs are introduced. In the test case under investigation, such functions are estimated by a kriging interpolation of the OF over a series of data points obtained from stochastic simulations of flow and transport, and calibrated against stochastic optimization solutions. The analysis of the two approaches for addressing the tradeoff of cost vs. reliability indicates that recourse accounts not only for the frequency of constraint violations, as the probability of failure does, but also for the intensity with which these occur. Ultimately, the recourse method allows considering less restrictive policies, although these may be highly sensitive to the choice of penalty functions. 相似文献
In the current study the application of organo‐modified bentonite for the adsorption of mycotoxins (aflatoxin B1, citrinin, patulin, and zearalenone) is presented. The modification of clays is carried out using benzyl‐tri‐n‐butyl ammonium bromide (BTB), benzethonium chloride (BTC), and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (DSS). Various experimental parameters such as pH, time, adsorbent dose, and mycotoxins concentration are thoroughly studied. The modified clays (B‐BTB, B‐BTC and B‐DSS) are characterized by X‐ray fluorescence, X‐ray diffraction, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results depicted the high detoxification efficiency (≈99%) of modified clays for the removal of mycotoxins under optimized conditions (pH 5, time: 30 min, adsorbent amount: 50 mg). The adsorption capacities of modified clays are found in the order of: B‐BTC (AFB1: 18.02, CIT: 18.35, PAT: 18.21, ZEA: 18.09 mg g?1) > B‐BTB (AFB1: 17.7, CIT: 18.11, PAT: 17.95, ZEA: 17.90 mg g?1) > B‐DSS (AFB1: 17.5, CIT: 18.02, PAT: 17.86, ZEA: 17.80 mg g?1). The obtained results fitted well with thermodynamic, isothermal (Langmuir) and pseudo‐second order kinetics. Low cost organo‐modified bentonite shows the promise in mitigating mycotoxin contamination, which could improve food safety and reduce environmental contamination. 相似文献
Contaminants were assessed in Sydney Harbour during baseline and three years of remediation of a former coking and steel facility. Concentrations of PAHs; PCBs; and lead measured in surface sediments indicate overall spatial distribution patterns of historical contaminants remains unchanged, although at much lower concentrations than previously reported due to natural sediment recovery. Recovery rates were in broad agreement with predicted concentrations; or in some cases lower, despite remediation at the Sydney Tar Ponds (STP) site. Contaminants showed little temporal variability, except for detection of significant increases in PAH concentrations during onset of remediation compared to baseline which represented a short term interruption in the overall long term natural recovery of sediments in Sydney Harbour. Recovery (via “capping”) was enhanced following recent harbour dredging activities where less contaminated outer harbour sediments were discharged into a confined disposal facility (CDF) required for a new container in the inner harbour. 相似文献