In situ remediation by means of zero-valent iron reactive barriers: laboratory tests

In order to verify the real feasibility of Zero-valent Iron Permeable Reactive Barriers (PRBs) for the in-situ treatment of chlorinated solvents, several laboratory tests (batch and column tests) were performed, particularly to evaluate the materials with the best characteristics for pollutants degradation (specific surface, reactivity and so on), and to determine the technical parameters (reaction kinetics, oxidation-reduction phenomena) of the remediation scheme. As a reference for this work, a site (soil and aquifer) contaminated by chlorinated solvents, located in Northern Italy, was taken into account. On the basis of the experimental results it was possible to find a model able to describe the reaction kinetics useful to define by scale-up procedure the real scale implementation of a PRB. This model was implemented by means of the MATLAB code.