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Suppression of PCDD/Fs during thermal desorption of PCBs-contaminated soil

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Abstract

Thermal treatment of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) contaminated soil was shown in earlier work to generate new PCBs, as well as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs). In this study, this thermal desorption was conducted with addition of three distinct inhibitors, including ammonium sulphate, urea and calcium oxide, to inhibit the formation of PCDDs and PCDFs when remediating PCBs-contaminated soil. Experiments were conducted for 40 min at 400 °C after adding 1 wt.% of inhibitor. Both the total PCDD/Fs and international toxic equivalent quantity (I-TEQ) reduced when inhibitors were introduced. Of the three compounds tested, CaO shows the highest inhibition efficiency, 92.2 % for total PCDD/Fs and 95.6 % for I-TEQ. The amount of CaO added also influences the suppression efficiency of PCDD/Fs. These results suggest that promoting desorption and destruction of precursors is probably the mechanism of suppression.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Institute for Thermal Power Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Zhonghua Zhao, Mingjiang Ni, Xiaodong Li, Alfons Buekens & Jianhua Yan

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  1. Zhonghua Zhao
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  2. Mingjiang Ni
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  3. Xiaodong Li
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  4. Alfons Buekens
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  5. Jianhua Yan
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Correspondence to Xiaodong Li.

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Responsible editor: Hongwen Sun

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Zhao, Z., Ni, M., Li, X. et al. Suppression of PCDD/Fs during thermal desorption of PCBs-contaminated soil. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 25335–25342 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7732-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7732-8

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