Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

CONTAMINATED LAND

EDL has substantial infield experience including large scale clean-up of soils contaminated with Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) from DDT to Dioxins. All trials and demonstrations to date have established the effectiveness of the MCD process to destroy all POPs in contaminated soils with a high destruction efficiency.

POPs DESTRUCTION

During the MCD process contaminated soil is subjected to high intensity impacts within the reactors. The major regions of chemical reaction initiation are ball-to-ball and ball-to-surface collision points, where soil particles and contaminant molecules are exposed to immense energy densities.

Research to date indicates that the mechanochemical destruction of organic contaminants is complex with two or more parallel reaction mechanisms. However, the dominant destruction pathway is ionisation which leads to complete dehalogenation and fragmentation of POPs.

Fractured surfaces of the contaminated soil matrix are created by mechanochemical processing leading to highly reactive surfaces. These reactive sites can ionise contaminant molecules that land on them forming contaminant radicals which fragment into smaller ‘daughter’ ions and ultimately neutral species.

We have found that the addition of quartz (<5% w/w) notably enhances destruction efficiency by increasing the overall area of reactive surfaces.