Nano-scale metallic iron for the treatment of solutions containing multiple inorganic contaminants.
Although contaminant removal from water using zero-valent iron nanoparticles (INP) has been investigated for a wide array of chemical pollutants, the majority of studies to date have only examined the reaction of INP in simple single-contaminant systems. Such systems fail to reproduce the complexity of environmental waters and consequently fail as environmental analogues due to numerous competitive reactions not being considered. Consequently there is a high demand for multi-elemental and site-specific studies to advance the design of INP treatment infrastructure. Here INP are investigated using batch reactor systems over a range of pH for the treatment of water containing multi-element contaminants specifically U, Cu, Cr and Mo, selected to provide site-specific analogues for leachants collected from the Lişava mine, near Oraviţa in South West Romania. Concurrently, a U-only solution was also analysed as a single-system for comparison. Results confirmed the suitability of nano-Fe(0) as a highly efficient reactive material for the aqueous removal of Cr(IV), Cu(II) and U(VI) over a range of pH applicable to environmental waters. Insufficient Mo(VI) removal was observed at pH >5.7, suggesting that further studies were necessary to successfully deploy INP for the treatment of geochemically complex mine water effluents. Results also indicated that uranium removal in the multi-element system was less than for the comparator containing only uranium.
Interface Analysis Centre, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. t.b.scott@bristol.ac.uk
T B
TB
Scott
I C
IC
Popescu
R A
RA
Crane
C
C
Noubactep
D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D007287:Inorganic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D010100:Oxygen / Q000737:chemistry; D012383:Romania; D012996:Solutions; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
D007287:Inorganic Chemicals; D012996:Solutions; D010100:Oxygen