Remediation of Ni^{2+}-contaminated water using iron powder and steel manufacturing byproducts

Article type: Research Article

Authors: JIN, Jian | ZHAO, Wei-rong | XU, Xin-hua | HAO, Zhi-wei | LIU, Yong | HE, Ping | ZHOU, Mi

Affiliations: Department of Environment Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: xhxu@hzcnc.com

Abstract: Steel manufacturing byproducts and commercial iron powders were tested in the treatment of Ni^{2+}-contaminated water. Ni^{2+} is a priority pollutant of some soils and groundwater. The use of zero-valent iron, which can reduce Ni^{2+} to its neural form appears to be an alternative approach for the remediation of Ni^{2+}-contaminated sites. Our experimental data show that the removal efficiencies of Ni^{2+} were 95.15% and 94.68% at a metal to solution ratio of 20 g/L for commercial iron powders and the steel manufacturing byproducts in 60 min at room temperature, respectively. The removal efficiency reached 98.20% when the metal to solution ratio was 40 g/L for commercial iron powders. Furthermore, we found that the removal efficiency was also largely affected by other factors such as the pHs of the treated water, the length of time for the metal to be in contact with the Ni^{2+}-contaminated water, initial concentrations of metal solutions, particle sizes and the amount of iron powders. Surprisingly, the reaction temperature appeared to have little effect on the removal efficiency. Our study opens the way to further optimize the reaction conditions of in situ remediation of Ni^{2+} or other heavy metals on contaminated sites.

Keywords: zero-valent iron, reduction, remediation, Ni[TeX:] ^{2+}

Journal: Journal of Environmental Sciences, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 464-467, 2006