Pulsed enhanced electrokinetic removal of zinc and cadmium from mine tailing-contaminated agricultural land

초록

The mine tailings contain various toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, zinc, lead and copper, and the metals have a high potential to threat the human health and surrounding eco-system. In korea, many agricultural lands around abandoned mine tailings, a high portion of clay and silt, have been contaminated with the high concentration of heavy metals. Electrokinetics is a promising technique for the low permeable soils, especially clayey soils, contaminated with heavy metals, radionuclide, certain organic compounds or mixed inorganic species. A few researchers have reported that the pulsed power has advantages than normal power in electrokinetic remediation. Rojo et al. reported the effectiveness of electrodialytic remediation to remove copper from mine tailings using pulsed electric field. Reddy and Saichek reported that the application of periodic electric potential increased solubilization of phenanthrene and mass transfer. In this study, the effectiveness of pulsed-enhanced electrokinetics was evaluated in point of the pulsed cycle, the strength of voltage gradient and energy consumption.