Investigation of transport behaviour of selected organic compounds in electrochemical remediation of contaminated soils

Lab scale experiments were planned and executed to determine the necessity of contaminant transport and its operation in different electrical fields. The investigations were carried out with bromophenol labelled with the radionuclide 82Br. 82Br is a typical radioactive label and emits gamma radiation with energies in a wide range. The main gamma lines, i.e. those with the highest intensities, can be measured at 776 keV (83%), at 554 keV (72%) and at 619 keV (40%). A special procedure for the synthesis of labelled bromophenol from phenol and irradiated ammonium bromide in a single step was developed. Semi-automatically operating lab equipment was designed to investigate the transport behaviour of the labelled compounds in four soil samples simultaneously and independently from each other. Particularly, the influence of several soil compositions and different electrical field conditions was investigated. Reference experiments were executed with inorganic ammonium bromide as well as without the influence of an electrical field. The experimental results for remediation of the investigated soils have shown that a transport of the contaminants to the electrodes is necessary in each case. (author)