Laboratory Research into Permeable Reactive Barriers for Groundwater Remediation

1IntroductionAs industrialization is gaining roots throughout the world and population is increasing, there is the accompanying problem of waste disposal from vari-ous sources. Due to inefficient waste management processes, subsurface water bodies are being con-taminated by various kinds of chemicals (Soliman etal., 1998). PRB is a comparatively new groundwater treat-ment technology where contaminants are converted into harmless by products in situ as the polluted water passes through a re…

Laboratory Research into Permeable Reactive Barriers for Groundwater Remediation

Permeable Reactive Barriers (PRB) is a new technology for groundwater pollution remediation. Contaminants are converted into harmless by products in situ as the polluted water passes through a reactive wall. Experimental results demonstrate how reactive media can be used to remove contaminants from polluted water by laying the reactive wall across the flow direction of the water. The most comprehensively studied and applied reactive barrier type uses granulat-ed Zero Valent Iron (ZVI) particles. In this process elemental iron provides a reducing environment which makes reduc-tive dechlorination of chlorinated organic compounds feasible or changes redox sensitive metals, so that they are immobi-lized by a precipitation reaction. A reactive wall column which is made up of ZVI, sand and zeolite has shown the high-est contaminant removal capacity compared to the other two which have different components. The potentials of ZVI, ze-olite and Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) to remove contaminants are due to their different physico-chemical proper-ties which make them to "sorb"metal contaminants. The results of this experiment show that PRB technology is an effi-cient method for the treatment of leachate-contaminated groundwater.