Chemosphere 2002-06-01

Dechlorination of pentachloroethane by commercial Fe and ferruginous smectite.

Javiera Cervini-Silva, Richard A Larson, Jun Wu, Joseph W Stucki

Index: Chemosphere 47(9) , 971-6, (2002)

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Abstract

Short-term experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of a commercial Fe and an iron-bearing clay mineral, ferruginuous smectite (SWa-1), on the degradation of pentachloroethane (PCA). After 3 h of contact time, SWa-1 catalyzed PCA dehydrochlorination to tetrachloroethene (PCE, 65% conversion), whereas commercial Fe promoted PCA stepwise dechlorination via dehydrochlorination (approximately 40% conversion) and subsequent PCE hydrogenolysis to trichloroethene (TCE). The addition of unaltered SWa-1 to commercial Fe led to a complete inhibition on TCE production, whereas the addition of reduced SWa-1 barely resulted in a 30% decrease.