Journal Article

Remediation of diesel-contaminated soil by alkoxyethanol aqueous two-phase system

Yue, Haoyu, Shang, Zhijie, Xu, Pan, Li, Xinxue, Feng, Dongyue, Zhu, Taohua

2022

Overview

The increasing diesel pollution accidents pose a serious threat to the ecological environment and human health. Remediation of diesel-contaminated soil (DCS) has attracted widespread attention during the past few decades. This work proposed an approach for the remediation of DCS by alkoxyethanol aqueous two-phase extraction (ATPE), which was an application of this small molecule aqueous two-phase system (ATPS). In addition, the influence of temperature, stirring speed, stirring time, and solid–liquid ratio on the removal of diesel was explored respectively. The removal efficiency of diesel could reach more than 97.18% in 18 min. Meanwhile, ATPS had high reusability, and the removal efficiency remained above 85.17% in the reuse process. Alkoxyethanol ATPE could effectively remove diesel hydrocarbons with different carbon chain lengths and the remediation process hardly caused residual organic solvents on the soil surface according to the analysis of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and Fourier transforms infrared (FT-IR), which could be regarded as the distinct advantage compared to the traditional surfactant washing method and organic solvent extraction method. The study of soil physicochemical properties and wheat germination proved that the soil structure and properties changed little after ATPE remediation. And finally, the mechanism of alkoxyethanol ATPE was intensively discussed according to the remediation characteristic. This work provided an efficient method for the remediation of DCS and widened the application fields of alkoxyethanol ATPS as well. Graphical abstract

• Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Aquatic Pollution / Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution / Binary systems / carbon / Diesel / Diesel fuels / Earth and Environmental Science / Ecotoxicology / Environment / Environmental Chemistry / Environmental Health / Environmental Pollution - analysis / Environmental Restoration and Remediation / Environmental science / Fourier analysis / Fourier transforms / Gas chromatography / gas chromatography-mass spectrometry / Germination / human health / Humans / Infrared analysis / Mass spectrometry / Mass spectroscopy / Molecular chains / Organic solvents / Physicochemical properties / Pollutants / pollution / Remediation / Research Article / Soil - chemistry / Soil contamination / Soil Pollutants - analysis / Soil pollution / Soil properties / Soil remediation / Soil structure / Soil surfaces / Solvent extraction / Solvents / Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared / Stirring / surfactants / temperature / Waste Water Technology / Water - analysis / Water Management / Water Pollution Control / wheat