IRON/PALLADIUM NANOPARTICLE – CATALYZED BREAKDOWN OF TRICHLORO-ETHYLENE IN DILUTE AQUEOUS SOLUTION IN A CONTINUOUS H.E.N.C.I. REACTOR

摘要

The Efficacy of Fe/Pd nanoparticles for breakdown of commonly found recalcitrant halogenated hydrocarbon groundwater pollutants is now widely appreciated, yet no commercially viable ex-situ process for such breakdown exists due to the difficulties inherent in 'fixing' or immobilizing these nano-scale catalyst particles in a reactor bed: All existing nano-catalyst immobilization (NCI) techniques are either themselves cost-prohibitive (on a per-pound-nanocatalyst basis) or result in thermodynamic and kinetic reaction efficiencies so low as to render the resulting process model grossly uneconomical for any but the most exotic applications, and certainly for 'commodity' type operations such as water remediation. The following experiment was designed to quickly test the kinetic efficiency and cost effectiveness of the new High-Efficiency Nano-Catalyst Immobilization (HENCI) technology by Cross Consulting & Engineering. GAC-filtered tap water artificially – contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) was pumped through pilot-scale HENCI reactors containing specially-immobilized Fe/Pd nanoparticles (nanocatalysts) at ambient pressure / temperature in order to determine the efficacy (e.g. the overall conversion-reactor efficiency) of these Fe/Pd nanoparticles in catalyzing the breakdown TCE when immobilized via the HENCI method.