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Investigations on mobility of carbon colloid supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) in a column experiment and a laboratory 2D-aquifer test system

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Abstract

Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) has recently gained great interest in the scientific community as in situ reagent for installation of permeable reactive barriers in aquifer systems, since nZVI is highly reactive with chlorinated compounds and may render them to harmless substances. However, nZVI has a high tendency to agglomerate and sediment; therefore it shows very limited transport ranges. One new approach to overcome the limited transport of nZVI in porous media is using a suited carrier colloid. In this study we tested mobility of a carbon colloid supported nZVI particle “Carbo-Iron Colloids” (CIC) with a mean size of 0.63 μm in a column experiment of 40 cm length and an experiment in a two-dimensional (2D) aquifer test system with dimensions of 110 × 40 × 5 cm. Results show a breakthrough maximum of 82 % of the input concentration in the column experiment and 58 % in the 2D-aquifer test system. Detected residuals in porous media suggest a strong particle deposition in the first centimeters and few depositions in the porous media in the further travel path. Overall, this suggests a high mobility in porous media which might be a significant enhancement compared to bare or polyanionic stabilized nZVI.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) in the project Fe-NANOSIT (Iron based nanoparticles and nano-composite structures for remediation of ground- and wastewater). We want to thank Stefan Scholz from the department Bioanalytical Ecotoxicology and the staff of the department Environmental Engineering from the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research UFZ (Leipzig, Germany) for provision of particles and technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476, Potsdam-Golm, Germany

    Jan Busch & Sascha E. Oswald

  2. Fraunhofer IKTS, Winterbergstraße 28, 01277, Dresden, Germany

    Tobias Meißner & Annegret Potthoff

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  1. Jan Busch
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  2. Tobias Meißner
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  3. Annegret Potthoff
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  4. Sascha E. Oswald
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Correspondence to Jan Busch.

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Responsible editor: Bingcai Pan

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Busch, J., Meißner, T., Potthoff, A. et al. Investigations on mobility of carbon colloid supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) in a column experiment and a laboratory 2D-aquifer test system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 10908–10916 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3049-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3049-7

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