A persulfate(PS)/sulfidated microscale zero-valent iron(S-mZVI) system was tested for treating a soil contaminated with phenol. Sulfidation of bare mZVI was conducted using a mechanochemical process utilizing a ball mill in order to improve persulfate activation capacity and stability of unmodified mZVI. The synthesized S-mZVI performed markedly better than the bare mZVI in activating PS. The optimum molar ratio of sulfur to mZVI was around 0.12. In the soil slurry experiments, a very rapid and complete removal of phenol was observed at the optimum molar ratios of PS to S-mZVI of 2:1 and PS to phenol of 16:1. The phenol removal efficiencies decreased as the water content of the slurries decreased. This was believed to be due to increased soil oxidant demand as the amount of soil was increased as relative to the water content. To evaluate the field applicability of the process, slurry experiments adopting high soil contents were carried out that simulated in-situ soil mixing conditions. These experiments resulted in substantially compromised degradation efficiencies of 54.3% and 43.8% within 4 hours. The current study generally shows that the PS/S-mZVI process has a potential to be developed into a remediation technology for soils contaminated with organics.

Keywords: Advanced Oxidation Processes, Sulfidated zero-valent iron, Persulfate, Soil remediation, In-situ Soil Mixing