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Evaluation of pulsed corona discharge plasma for the treatment of petroleum-contaminated soil

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Abstract

Petroleum hydrocarbons released to the environment caused by leakage or illegal dumping pose a threat to human health and the natural environment. In this study, the potential of a pulsed corona discharge plasma system for treating petroleum-polluted soils was evaluated. This system removed 76.93 % of the petroleum from the soil in 60 min with an energy efficiency of 0.20 mg/kJ. Furthermore, the energy and degradation efficiencies for the remediation of soil contaminated by single polyaromatic hydrocarbons, such as phenanthrene and pyrene, were also compared, and the results showed that this technology had potential in organic-polluted soil remediation. In addition, the role of water molecules was investigated for their direct involvement in the formation and transportation of active species. The increase of soil moisture to a certain extent clearly benefitted degradation efficiency. Then, treated soils were analyzed by FTIR and GC-MS for proposing the degradation mechanism of petroleum. During the plasma discharging processes, the change of functional group and the detection of small aromatic hydrocarbons indicated that the plasma active species attached petroleum hydrocarbons and degradation occurred. This technique reported herein demonstrated significant potential for the remediation of heavily petroleum-polluted soil, as well as for the treatment of organic-polluted soils.

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Abbreviations

PAHs:

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

AOPs:

Advanced oxidation processes

PCD:

Pulsed corona discharge

PHE:

Phenanthrene

SI:

Supporting information

DC:

Direct current

EE:

Energy efficiency

HPLC:

High-performance liquid chromatography

TOC:

Total organic carbon

GC-MS:

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

FTIR:

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

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Acknowledgments

This work was completed by the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51578122), the program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0826), Shanghai Pujiang Program, the Fundamental Research funds for Central Universities (CUSF-DH-D-2015041), and China Scholarship Council. All the financial supports are gratefully acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Dong Hua University, Shanghai, China

    Rui Li, Yanan Liu, Ruiwen Mu & Wenyan Cheng

  2. State Environmental Protection Engineering Center for Pollution Treatment and Control in Textile Industry, Shanghai, China

    Yanan Liu

  3. Laboratoire de Génie des Procédés et Traitements de Surface, UPMC Univirsity of Paris 06, EA 3492, 11 rue Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005, Paris, France

    Stéphanie Ognier

Authors
  1. Rui Li
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  2. Yanan Liu
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  3. Ruiwen Mu
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  4. Wenyan Cheng
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  5. Stéphanie Ognier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanan Liu.

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Responsible editor: Bingcai Pan

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Li, R., Liu, Y., Mu, R. et al. Evaluation of pulsed corona discharge plasma for the treatment of petroleum-contaminated soil. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 1450–1458 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7929-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7929-x

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