Abstract
In the present work, plasma remediation of p-nitrophenol (PNP) contaminated soil was performed in a novel spray-type coaxial cylindrical dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) system at ambient temperature. This system is capable of generating large-size nonthermal plasma (NTP) and improving the diffusion and transfer of chemical active species around the dispersed soil particles. Several key parameters including plasma treatment time, discharge voltage, soil granular size, the entry speed of soil, PNP initial concentration, gas variety, and gas flow rate were investigated in terms of PNP degradation and energy efficiencies. Under the optimized experimental conditions, 54.2% of PNP was degraded after only 50 s discharge treatment, indicating that the spray-type coaxial cylindrical DBD system can degrade organic pollutants in soil more quickly compared to other plasma systems due to its efficient transfer of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) into the contaminated soil. The possible PNP degradation pathways were proposed based on intermediates identification results and the role of reactive species analysis. The toxicological assessment of the PNP decomposition products was conducted by quantitative structure-activity relationship (QASR) analysis. This work is expected to provide a potential plasma technology for rapid and efficient processing of industrial organic pollutants contamination soil.
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This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT19JC20), the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Collaborative Control and Joint Remediation of Soil and Water Pollution under State Environmental Protection (GHBK-2020-006), and Dalian High-level Talents Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project (2018RQ28).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Ying Qu, Zheng Yu, and Bangfa Peng. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Nan Jiang. Jie Li, Kefeng Shang, Na Lu, and Yan Wu critically revised part of the work. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Jiang, N., Qu, Y., Yu, Z. et al. p-Nitrophenol contaminated soil remediation in a spray-type coaxial cylindrical dielectric barrier discharge plasma system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 58110–58120 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19912-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19912-6